I voted for mayo, but really prefer homemade mayo ( I make sure to get farm fresh eggs).

I would say just keep reading to him and let him pick out good books that he will really enjoy. My kids have both hit that wall where I really wondered if the reading thing was ever going to happen- but it did! It just seemed like one day they just got over that hump and really took off. If you aren't using AAS yet I would definitely start, and if you are using it just keep going. He will get there:)

I believe if you go under the teacher section you can put your student in the category you want them to work on.

I make big term plans for the year, but then we do a weekly schedule for the details. I find there is less pressure to get things done that way and we can slow down if something becomes difficult or speed up if it is too easy without it throwing off the schedule.

These sound great! We are big lovers of veggietales around here, but as the kids get older I think they would enjoy something else too! Thanks so the suggestion!

I'm really not sure if they are at the convention- I have yet to go to a convention. The samples online show what the workbook and teacher's manual look like. If you know someone who has it I would definitely look into it. My ds8 loves math and gets it easily, but my dd6 doesn't have the same "mathy" personality (she loves science). But she still really enjoys math and has done very well using McRuffy! We will be using it next year for the third time!

I would suggest looking in to McRuffy math (our personal favorite! ). It is spiral like Saxon, and includes activities for visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learners. There is good review without it being too much and lots of fun games to play too! There are samples on their website (we use the color math) and they are reasonably priced! Hope that helps! - We live in Ohio too:)

Definitely look into IEW PAL. We just started a couple of weeks ago and it sounds perfect for what you need:)

Thank you all for your replies! When I have my computer back I will do some more searches for old threads on this but right now I only have my phone and it doesn't let me search very easily! I have a kindle on my phone but it is just too hard to read- for me or the kids! I was looking into i-pads too but really I am pretty new to all of the technology. I would love to be able to see the different options first hand:) I do really appreciate all of your explanations on how you use them!

I am wondering if anyone uses a Kindle (or something similar) for school books and exactly how you go about doing that. I have really debated lately on buying a Kindle (not sure which one!) since there are so many books and school materials that can be downloaded now. I don't know too much about them- can you print from them? Can children use them easily to read a book- or are they too fragile for that? Any suggestions on how you use a Kindle in your home would be very helpful. Thanks:)

My ds8 and I take turns reading aloud for history and science. He seems to absorb the most info when he is reading aloud, but dd6 learns best when listening. So I read for a while and then hand the book to him for a while. I do read aloud fun books to them at night too and then they are all just listening. So I guess we do a combination - whatever works for that particular day:)

We used McRuffy for math and my kids have loved it! There are a lot of fun games and manipulatives, and the teachers manual is great at telling you what to do and how to do it. I will be using it again next year for my son that will be 4. For what it is worth, when we were first started I looked into Saxon too, but decided to go with McRuffy and I am very glad we did. We are now transitioning my oldest into intermediate Saxon and I really feel like McRuffy has given him a great foundation (Saxon 5/4 will be mostly review for him and he may test into 6/5 when he is finished with McRuffy 3rd grade).

My thought would be to just do the good books and just try to involve her in some of the history and science things the older kids are doing. If you are anything like me with a new baby I would probably be skipping most of the "extra" activities anyway. We did LHFHG and I wasn't really that impressed with it anyway (especially the science). We liked Beyond, and especially Bigger much better.

I have kids similar in age to you and we did HOD Bigger together this year. I had to help my dd6 with the science notebooking, but other than that the kids were easily combined! They just did separate math and language arts.

Ripley's aquarium in Gatlinburg- we loved it!

I'm not sure there is one specific for those curricula but you may want to look into Rod &Staff. I belong to that one and there are people that use things like pathway readers (we do!) and CLE. They are a very helpful group!

We love McRuffy math! I don't think that it gets bad reviews, but I just never hear much about it (except for me recommending it to people:)) I am so glad I decided to take a chance on a not so well known math curriculum since it has worked really well for my children!

I would say she is pretty reliable. When I look at her reviews I am looking at the things like whether it is teacher intensive and what learning styles it works well for. It's nice to just get a quick synopsis of what the curriculum is all about too.

We used LHTH when my son was 4 and my daughter was 2 and they really enjoyed it! I didn't use the CD but would have liked to use it. I don't have any experience with HWOT but with a 4 year old I think she still has plenty of time to learn to write. Be careful not to try too much too soon because I have read that can develop into improper pencil grasp, which can cause problems later down the road. You can try one of those pencil grippers that slides on a pencil. My 3.5 year old is starting to work on his letters but we are doing things like finger painting, tracing letters and numbers with his finger, playdough, and if I get brave we may try some sand :) Hope that helps and best of luck on a great experience with HOD!

IEW has a great poetry memorization program, but if you don't want to spend that much money, you can find your own poems (which is what we did). "Favorite Poems Old and New" is where we got the poems we are going to memorizing- our library has is so I just checked it out and typed out the poems we wanted. I record the poem for them to listen to on my droid phone (tape-a-talk) and they can usually memorize a poem pretty quickly!

Early reading is a great problem to have:) My 3.5 year old surprised us the same way! You might want to look into AAR- I have heard good things about it. For my son he is using the AAS phonogram cards that his older siblings used and memorizing all of the letter sounds. He is just starting IEW PAL reading also. This includes a lot of games and is something I can see him loving (we have only had it for a week but there are 35 different file folder games that you can play). They do use some sight words and break down those sight words into their sounds. For example, right now he is learning the word green and we are learning that two e's together make the "squeally e" sound and they say "e" in the middle of a word like green. There is also a Phonetic Farm where they put stickers on for the sounds they have learned. They have a great webinar on their website you can view if you want to look into it.

If you are looking for something similar to Saxon in the spiral approach you might want to look into McRuffy. I looked into Saxon but kept reading that it moved too slow. We are going to start using Saxon in 5/4, but for the younger grades McRuffy has worked really well for us. They have a lot of samples on their website and it is reasonably priced. We use the Color Math and not the older black and white version.

My kids are not that old yet, but you might want to look into something like IEW FIx-It where he can see the errors and correct them. Maybe that will help him spot errors in his own work.

If you are not going to do Adventures, I would suggest starting with ECC since it is supposed to give a great base for later history studies to build on (we haven't used it yet but will be next year with ds8 and dd6). I wouldn't worry about trying to match up the history cycles with CC since they are on a 3 year cycle and MFW is on a 5 year cycle- not sure how that would ever happen. I have been warned also to not expect a young child to be able to do all of the assignments in ECC and just let them go at their own pace and at their own level. Best of luck!

We are just starting level 3 and I don't think we have covered that yet. Just a shot in the dark, because I really don't know "spelling rules" (besides the ones I have taught in AAS!) but I'm wondering if it is like the c or k rule. Maybe you try c first and if that doesn't work use s. Someone please correct me if I am wrong- my son makes the same mistakes and I would love to tell him why it is c instead of s:) Never mind- it doesn't work that way:( Sorry- I guess it is just a memorization thing if there isn't a rule for it.