In considering which instrument your son should pursue, I would suggest that you evaluate his ability to concentrate and his coordination level. Can he sit through the piano lesson or will he wiggle the whole way through? My son began piano and as much as he loved to play he was easily frustrated with his lack of coordination, so he switched to Suzuki violin. And now he loves the violin too. As you are proficient in both instruments I would suggest starting on the violin to train his ears, followed by the piano in a couple of years. Your decision isn't set in stone, you can always evaluate and perhaps you may end up teaching both instruments. As to the cost of a violin, there are many music store that have a rent to own policy. And once you own it you can trade up to about 65% of the original cost of the violin to the next size purchase. A piano can be bought on Craigslist or the local thrift store for a relatively low cost. Buy one without broken keys, and call around for piano repair pricing before you decide to buy a broken one. Good luck.

Have you considered using Writeshop Primary and Writeshop Jnr. as a supplement to WWE? It is designed for parents who lack confidance in teaching writing. Their website writeshop.com contains samples, and is worth checking out. We use both, my dd tears up at the mention of writing and I felt clueless as how to guide her as writing is not my strength. WWE helps me to evaluate her reading comprehension and assess her ability to articulate in words and in writing her comprehension process. Writeshop helps her to see how simple the mechanics of writing is. It teaches her how to improve the sentences that she writes. The samples explains it way better than I can. The older children may want to consider Writeshop I & II. Good luck :)

Miquon math is a great supplemental program that teaches kids how to think mathematically, it focuses on patterns and relationships that encourages children to " discover " how math works. You will definitely need the Lab Annotation book or you will stare at the page in frustration and wonder how on earth you are supposed to teach the concept. It moves quite rapidly from addition to subtraction to fraction and multiplications in the first book. There is no dumbing down here. But don't be alarm, I initially thought it was too advanced for my dd5 but she loves it and can do simple multiplication such as 3*5 because she understands mathematically that it represents 3 groups of 5. She draws 3 circles and places 5 shapes into the circle and discovers the answer. We used Right Start A, after an introduction with Miquon and my dd was a little bored with it. However we love using the abacus as a visual tool for math operations. At times when we felt that Miquon was moving too fast, we slowed the pace down with Right Start math. Saxon math was used to ensure that we were in line with state standard. We picked and pulled out the pages where we felt extra practice was needed. I know it seems like overkill, but each program has its strengths and weaknesses. You need to ask yourself what it is that you want your son to learn, and use that as a guide in selecting a curriculum choice. Good luck, hope this info. helped a bit.

Ebay has the Robinson curriculum discs on sale anywhere from $75-$200. You might also want to consider A2 curriculum, it has similar teaching style and materials at half the cost.