I just discovered Story of Science and I am very excited to check it out. But I wondered about the age group. Thank you for mentioning them. :)

Skimming was the idea. :) we will only be 5 years old at this point and I think that if I go with a more indepth 4 year cycle he would have forgotten the ancients by the time we get to modern history. I want to just touch on the eras and read books set or about those eras. Just so he knows the difference between an Egyptian and a Roman. Or that he knows that the colonial age is before the Victotian age. 1st go around I just want to put a timeline in place in his mind. Second go around he will be 6 years old. And we may get into more details. But maybe still not indepth. I know at some point we will revisit Americana. And I have to incorporate Australiana. By the time he is 8 or even 10 we will be starting more indepth stuff. We will be doing the crafts, notebooking, unit studies etc.

If she has an iPad you can limit the apps she has access to and lock her into an app. There are some great Montessori math apps and slate math that were perfect for my son at that age. We were able to transfer what was being taught on the apps to hands on activities. And we did a lot of Montessori activities also. My son learnt a lot using an iPad but if he was fiddly around on it I removed it also. I only keep quality educational apps on the iPad for him. It is for school. Not for fun. If she loves to be read to, just keep reading. When my son was that age we were reading in excess of several hours a day. You can teach a lot via reading. Including history, math, science and more. MathStart books by Stuart. Murphy are amazing. And possibly worth the investment if you can't get them from the library. They have math activities in the back of the book to do. If you desire to introduce her to some workbook type work, SchoolZone has cheap but completely acceptable workbooks for pre-k that covers things like thinking skills, letter sounds, counting, mazes, dot to dots and more. Kumon also has a series of books for folding, pasting, cutting, coloring skills. They are called Let's (fold, cut, paste etc) Personally I don't see a need for a curriculum until they are ready for a kindergarten and up curriculum.

I was going to suggest Calvert and K12.

If I do cycle through history I do think I would do it faster than 4 years. Maybe 4 years in a year. And I would keep repeating it until my son has a pretty solid idea of the order of things. Then we when he is older we will delve more deeply.

We are doing a year of Americana. American history, geography, civics intertwined. I am going to see how we do sticking to chronology. But we might end up breaking everything down to location or mini eras. What resonates with my son about history are day to day lives. We got hooked on the westward-Ho era by reading books like Little House on the Prairie. And by visiting local canals. Johnny Appleseed owned land in our town and we visit his former land holdings. We love to attend living history places also. So my son is getting a feel for local history with immersion. We also read a lot and watch shows. Either non fiction books or documentaries or fictional books and shows set in a certain era. My son has broken history down into 2 parts. Before automobiles and after automobiles. It is a good start as he just turned 4. Next year we intend to switch over to SotW with lots of supplementing.

For a prereader I would look at preschool prep products. Their sight words DVDs and readers are really good. As are their phonics DVDs. Marshmallow math is a great book for math. It is for you to read and then implement. Honestly...if it were me, I would see about investing in an iPad. Or the cheaper iPad mini. You can pretty much teach a child to read and do math from an iPad alone if you use good quality apps.

I was unaware of the enrichment books. From a cursory glance they seem to be just word problems. spectrum math doesn't have many of those. So they would be a nice fit using them side by side. The chapters even align by the looks of it. I also like spectrum reading books. I prefer real books and lots of reading for fun, but if you are tutoring and filling gaps, and if you are working with reluctant readers they work nicely. The books are just full of passages and then a series of questions.

PM me hunter and I will take some pics for you.

I like BFSU for this reason. Lots of books to read (borrow from library), some shows, and mostly discussion. My son is little and doesn't get much out of experiments yet.

Oops sorry. Audio books on iPad.

I borrow audio books from my library via an app. I get them for 2 weeks. So far I have been able to enjoy quite a few of them. You could even borrow the kindle version and read along if you so desired.

There are many apps that can be used offline. Some do need internet connection. But not all. You can download audio books, ebooks (kindle or other format, even PDF) you can also save music and video on it. So you don't need to internet.

I love my iPad. I bought it for my son when he was speech delayed and had a preliminary autism diagnosis. From my iPad he not only improved his speech, he learnt to read, learns math, learns about science, learns about geography. He does a lot of critical thinking apps. We have general knowledge apps like Brain pop. And he can read ebooks.... Which is does not yet as he prefers real books. Oh and we have an amazing music app that he has been using to learn to play keyboard. Yes there are many fluffy apps that have more entertainment value than educational. But I just don't put those on the iPad. I stick to apps that are educationally beneficial. I use the iPad for everything. Watching Shows, being on the internet. I can print. And frankly..... I very very seldom turn on the computer we have other than to play shows, as it is connected to a TV. Our replacement to cable.

Yup! They are simple, traditional, straightforward, and thorough and my son likes them. They are also very affordable. They are great for a kid that gets math. But they are just workbooks. So they do not teach a child how to do the math. You have to do that part as a parent.

Grr. Apparently each time I try to post the website goes offline. So here is the quick of it... For the 3rd time. I think when they are little vocabulary is essential to teach as it gives them some legs to stand on with higher level science. I used to hate having to stop and check definitions as I was reading my text books when I was in High school. The exploring and the observations that we did in primary school didn't adequately prepare me. I have dabbled with quite a few science curriculums and at the end of the day I prefer science to be integrated and scaffolding. BFSU does this better than any other program that I have seen. Personally I want to be lazy and I wish someone were able to make a simplified full, BFSU plan. Something where I didn't have to supplement with books so much. But maybe that would take our fun from us. I read the content. I make notes of the vocabulary. We read lots of books about the subject of the week. We just add these books to my sons free reading and our reading together time. And we watch lots of shows from discovery streaming, library DVDs, Peter Weatherall and YouTube. We have lots of discussion, often when we go for walks. And at the end of the week I ask my son to dictate to me a little "essay" about what he knows. It doesn't take much time out of our day. I wish I kept up with posts more. But this is how we do science. Please note my son was 3 at the time. And because he was so little he didn't get much out of experiments. But those will be added in time. http://littlemanlogic.wordpress.com/category/science/

I have spent a lot of time thinking about science and dabbling. I used to love the idea of a 3 or 4 year cycle. But at the end of the day what works best for us is an integrated science program that scaffolds and is reading heavy. The program thus far that fits this is BFSU. I read the content. Write down the applicable vocabulary to learn. I am a big believer in vocabulary being essential footing for science. And then go to the library for books on the subject. And I supplement with science shows from discovery streaming, library DVDs or even YouTube. We don't do much with experiments, but that will come in time. We do have lots of discussions throughout the week. At the end of the week I have him dictate what he knows. I don't have many postings but below is how we do science. And it works well. Even more so when BFSU is out guide. http://littlemanlogic.wordpress.com/category/science/

Part of my mind is thinking that these recommendations are following certain state guideline for home schooling hours more so than what is actually needed. I could be wrong but I thought that my state requirements mention a set number of hours and days of the year. Something like 1040 hours (less in lower grades) and 180 days a year, to be logged for homeschooling. Of course I could be completely wrong.

The I Can Read series that includes books like Biscuit are available for Kindle. If you have access to an iPad there are a plethora of ebooks that can be used. Some are subscription based but there are enough free books to make it worth downloading. Farfaria is one that comes to mind. But there are many more.

Just so anyone else doesn't go back and search for the yahoo group like I did here is the link. http://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/barefootragamuffins/

You can also get an cord or convertor that will allow one to connect an iPad to a TV. There are several ways to do it but it a TV is relatively recent it will have an HDMI outlet and that would be the one to connect to.

An Australian Movie that received critical acclaim was Picnic at Hanging Rock.

For that age, several Aussie books I loved were; Supose I die. It is biographical. Quite a serious book about a pioneer Woman in Australia. Playing Beatie Bow by Ruth Park is another book I loved. It is more fun but haunting historical fiction set in Sydney. Ash Wednesday by Colin Thiele. It is about a girl in a wheelchair. And how she escapes a bush fire.

Last year my husband bought a cheap computer tower for about $100 and hooked it up to a TV. We don't have cable so we run TV shows via Amazon Prime, Hulu, YouTube, Netflix and Discovery Streaming.

My son likes to self teach. And though he is only 4 he does quite well for himself. He has worked his way through several K and most of 1st grade curriculums from various sources. He used workbooks, reading all the information given, he watched videos, math shows, plays apps and reads math books. Maybe math games would work for your son?