I had my book separated and rebound at Office Max. Well, I spiral-bound the teacher portion, left the student portion loose. (I also had them make copies of the student portion, since there was copyright permission, for my 2nd DD).

I have all my stuff ordered. :party: I've had all my main subjects for a month or so now, but I've been ordering extras and fun stuff and more books. (And more books and more books and more books. :tongue_smilie:) I'm officially cutting myself off. AND I have almost all of my preschool stuff printed out for youngest DD and filed away.

http://www.mamajennblogs.com/ Particularly invaluable for MFWK!

Same here. :)

:iagree: Ditto on the bolded parts. We made it 19 weeks or so b/f bailing. For first grd, we're going w/ TWTM: FLL1, WWE1, biology. We're also starting AAS1 and doing some geography, Bible & art.

I'm going to be reading Long Story Short: Ten-Minute Devotions to Draw Your Family to God with my 2 girls. It has 4 days of reading (going chronilogically through the Bible) and a day of a Psalm or Proverb. It's a year and a half of reading/discussion all laid out, surveying the Old Testament. They are scheduled to release Old Story New in October, I believe, which covers the New Testament in 1.5 years. I plan on adding in my own drill-work (books of the Bible, etc) and scripture memorization. If you want something more curriculum-like, there's Bible Study Guide for All Ages (BSGFAA) or you could go with a workbook approach with CLE or R&S (or other programs).

I have all the Lang fairy tales waiting on my Kindle... Is there a list out there of the ones that are most friendly for little ears?

I'm pretty new to TWTM and am still in the planning stages for our 1st grade year (to start in August). So take this with a grain of salt! Science: I am planning on doing TWTM's science recs, but I didn't like the look of The Green Thumb. I just ordered lots of Usborne and DK and Kingfisher nature books and we're going to Charlotte Mason that part of our year a wee bit. (Even bought nice sketchbooks for both girls and myself to take along with us -- can't wait!):) Here's a link to my newish blog; it has some printables for a TWTM 1st grade science year. Memory: I'll probably do the memory work in FLL, but I'm also going to be doing some Bible verse memorization, books of the Bible, etc. I'm using these cards for a guide. I also like the look of the Simply CM memory box system... Notebooks: Here's where I'm deviating from the recs. I can't stand 3-whole punched stuff. Can't stand it. I plan on filing everything (still using her system of subjects and separating things into their categories)...but just filing it. Then at the end of the school year, I will spiral bind it all into one neat and tidy booklet. Cause I'm addicted to spiral binding anything I can. :D

I'd say get the Ready Set Go set and just do a fun LOTW-type year. I just got finished printing these: http://www.starfall.com/ni/download/level-k-bl/bl-abc.pdf for my 3 (nearly 4) year old. They may have more handwriting than you want, but they're free!

We dropped MFWK at week 19. In theory, I like that everything is integrated: Bible, science, phonics, read-alouds, character. In practice, if one little thing got left out or we took a few days break, I felt like it ruined the entire week. And the 6-day units were very hard for me to wrap my mind around. We prefer 4-day weeks around here. ;) (Yes, I know I am allowed to tweak it fit me...but I just couldn't/didn't.) I've done much better with a LOTW-type program of my own making, with separate math/Bible/science.

Christian Book Distributers, which I mentioned upthread, has sample pages of both.

My 5 yr old wanted to learn guitar, so my DH is teaching her. I'm sure there's a better instrument to start with, but this is free and it's what she was interested in.

Hmmm, maybe someone else can chime in here b/c I no longer have my copy on hand.... but I think it has exactly everything that the workbook has, just no writing lines.... You can see a long sample here. There is the passage, the questions, etc.

Ooo, they are lovely. AND they jumped right into my Amazon cart.

Same here. The format of The Complete Writer is: ~section on the writing philosophy ~all the lessons, level 1-4, with detailed scripts ~some other stuff in the back, I don't remember what Anyway, I did a side-by-side comparison of the teacher section of the workbook and the WWE/The Complete Writer book and found them pretty similar. The first few lessons have some differences in wording and amount of description/explanation (but not enough to make a difference to me). In later lessons, the teacher directions were identical in both.

My preschooler is using these. And they're so cheap that I really don't mind if she does a few pages on her own (i.e. scribbling all over them, LOL). Next year, my youngest will be 4 and we'll be doing a LOTW-type program of my own making (+ OPGTR). She'll also be tagging along with big sis for science/geography. ETA: next year, she'll continue with some R&S workbooks. (They are really nice little books and very affordable!)

That's great to hear (and somewhat what I'm hoping to be able to do). But it sure is nice to have it all laid out for this first year!

If you want to see inside of ETC, CBD (Christian Book Distributers) has online samples (the primers would be most age-appropriate). If you want an actual workbook for that age, the R&S books (especially A,B, & C) are good (also can view online).

Do you have WWE/The Complete Writer? It has all 4 years of parent instruction, no student pages...

I have the workbook and it does look very nice and professional. My DD likes the look of the pages (simple pen & ink drawings). Much more exciting than a piece of handwriting paper on which mommy has written the copywork sentence...:glare: BUT I also don't like doing copywork from a story we haven't read. I'm planning on using the scheduled stories as our read-alouds each week. I took my WWE1 workbook to Office Max, as inspired by a thread here. Had the binding removed and spiral-bound all the teacher instruction pages inside the book cover. Kept the student pages loose (in fact, as it's allowed to copy for family use, I had Office Max go ahead and run 1 copy of all the student pages to keep on hand for my younger child...or if my DD makes a terrible hole in her paper or something). Cost a few bucks, but worth the hassle for me to have it all ready to go.

I taught myself to knit a few years ago, entirely from books. (I knew no one that knitted and have never crocheted or sewn). I really found these helpful: Kids Knitting: Projects for Kids of all ages (Melanie Falick) Knitting Basics (Betty Barnden) I also used: The Everything Knitting Book (Jane Eldershaw) Knitting Pretty (Kris Percival) I also spent time perusing knitting forums and such. But the first 2 books were the most helpful for me.

I bypassed temper tantrum and went straight into denial. ;) Now it's a race to see which will arrive first: the credit card bill or my tax refund...

This sounds very much like MFWK! However, we tried MFW for my 1st and it wasn't a fit for me (she loved it). For my 2nd, I will be doing LOTW when she's 4, then OPGTR + (maybe) something like FIAR for K5 (but by that point, she'll be tagging along with big sis for many subjects like art and history and science, so I won't be making as big a deal for K). And we are watching one of those LeapFrog videos RIGHT NOW. :D They are awesome.

Ah, I like that, too. :D Bookmarking that idea for later years...

Well, I've had a happy trigger finger this week (waiting on 4 orders currently)...and I just hit order on the Foundations Verses cards. Hopefully, we'll get some good use from them! (I also work as Children's Minister @ our church, so if DDs don't like them, I can always take them to "work". :)) For those looking for Bible verses set to music, check out Seeds Family Worship. They have several volumes available.