I think that is brilliant.

I am right where you are with math, OP! I've been working (very slowly) through Khan Academy, starting at the very beginning. I'd like to read the Ma book and do more serious study of algebra and calculus in a couple of years, but for right now, I feel like at least Khan Academy is free and waking up the dormant math part of my brain. One of my big Swiss Cheese problems is history. My history education was high-quality, but really disjointed. My knowlege is a chunk here, a detail there, no sense of how things fit together. I'm an avid reader, but because I don't have a strong sense of the flow of human events, I find that I never really know where to drop in new information. I am pretty seriously pondering the idea of hanging up a cord that runs around the living room, so I can jot down dates and events on note cards and clip them to the timeline. (This may be a ridiculous plan, but I am tired of being so ignorant!) I also want to tackle physics at some point, which was a big stumbling block for me in high school. But I don't have a plan for this yet. I did buy Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding for my Kindle, and I am embarrassed to admit that I have learned several things from reading a text intended for those teaching kindergartners. So that may be a thought for you! We also bought a couple of posters about geological time and evolution: http://www.amazon.com/Tree-Life-Poster-Print-24x36/dp/B003XRAI90 http://www.amazon.com/24x36-Geology-Educational-Science-Poster/dp/B000YZJS7M/ref=pd_sim_hg_3 I feel like all my educational gaps basically involve me knowing lots and lots of facts, but those facts being poorly organized and disconnected. So posters and timelines feel helpful to me (albeit kind of dorky).

This is a really interesting thread! As someone still in the decision-making phase, I really appreciate everyone who has been honest about what their homeschooling family life looks like. I only have one child, and I WAH part-time. My husband works very long hours, so I am often parenting and managing the household essentially on my own. My child is very, ah, intense, needs a lot of interaction, a lot of conversation about how gravity works, a lot of supervision so he doesn't dismantle light fixtures, etc. I often feel like I have to choose between letting him watch TV (something I have Puritanical feelings about) and accepting that my floor will forever be covered with a thick mulch layer of Legos and train tracks. One of the things that really gives me pause about homeschooling is just that. How do you combine being someone's personal teacher and having a house that isn't a disaster? Or being able to shop for frivolous things like food? So many things about homeschooling seem absolutely worthwhile and valuable to me, but I also think I am not a person with terrific organizational skills. Anyway, it is really interesting to see so many say that they think of homeschooling as their career. That makes so much sense to me as a paradigm. Thank you all for sharing your perspective!

A six-year-old took some candy? And the teacher is responding to this as a great moral transgression? I don't know what to say about this. The behavior is of course not desirable, but it also strikes me as totally developmentally normal for a lot of kids in that age bracket. I think it's weird and unhelpful to pathologize this instead of being more like "Hey, it's not okay to take things from my desk without asking, let's figure out a plan to make sure this doesn't happen again." Basically I don't think this is that big of a deal. And I think the teacher's response is pretty melodramatic. The kid is six. Six-year-olds are still developing the brain structures that lead to impulse control. Shaming will not help them get there any faster.

Such a good point! Both my husband and I had various issues in school that I think were classic unchallenged-bright-kid problems (my husband especially, who is very, very smart, smarter than I am, and who was a total hellion in school for a long time). I'm trying to be cool and just let my child be whoever he turns out to be, but I think it's natural to be doing a lot of thinking about how things were for you, and how you hope they will be different for your own children.

I know this is nigh-on heretical, but I would not be especially interested in doing Latin with my own child. I know all the arguments for doing so but have not found them to be particularly true in myself (I went to a classical prep school and studied Latin and Greek for six years). It's hard to say if I would be an even less organized person if I hadn't taken learned Latin (I suppose it's possible), but I do not really find that my Latin vocabulary carries over in a helpful way, or that it's easier for me to learn other Romance languages. It's possible that I just don't notice these things, I suppose. But I'm not really aware of them being true. I would also be concerned about my own ability to teach Latin correctly, to be honest. I would at minimum have to study quite a bit to get back up to speed. And there are other subjects I consider more useful, I think.

Great thread. I'm always on the hunt for books with more diversity. I recently picked up a copy of Thunder Rose by Jerdine Nolen (ill. by Kadir Nelson), a tall tale about the first free-born baby in a Black family. Nelson's illustrations of Rose are terrific, full of her personality. And what kid doesn't like tall tales? Jerdine Nolen is African American, and her back catalog may be worth checking out for more titles: a lot of the books seem to feature children of color.

From that seller on Amazon, oddly. I'm guessing that there are two print runs of very similar posters? (Total speculation.)

:bigear: Not a book, but we have this poster: http://www.amazon.com/Tree-Life-Poster-Print-24x36/dp/B003XRAI90 I think there are two very similar versions of this poster, FWIW. One with Darwin as the final human, and one (the one we have) with a woman. Ours also doesn't have the text box in the bottom left.

I don't know if this helps, but what I did was write down the theme for each week listed in the guide and then look for books based on that theme. There were a couple of recommended books I had already read and didn't care for, and a few others I couldn't find. If you reduce it to the general theme for each week, it's really easy to find replacement books (or additional books). I don't think the books themselves matter so very much - although the listed books are generally very high-quality, which is probably something to strive to match.

We are, but since my little guy is (IMO) too young for anything formal, we're using it mostly as a reading list and for occasional activity ideas. I originally worked out a pretty optimistic schedule for what we would be doing, but as it turns out, we basically read the books and then use the weekly themes to find more books about similar topics. Like others, we mixed the weeks up a bit. We currently have a couple of beans sprouting in a bag taped to the window, and are reading about leaves and tractors. Some fun farm-related books we've discovered through this: Tremendous Tractors (Amazing Machines) by Tony Mitton (I couldn't find the original recommendation for the second tractor book. This one has been a big hit with one out of one preschoolers surveyed.) On the Farm by David Elliott (farm-themed poetry) A Handful of Dirt by Raymond Bial Farming by Gail Gibbons (I did a week to start just about farming, to give my urban child a sense of what we were going to read about in the coming weeks) One Bean by Anne Rockwell From Seed to Plant by Gail Gibbons Jack's Garden by Henry Cole (love!) Overall, I'm really enjoying the very gentle structure following WFA even as loosely as we do is giving to our weeks! I think it's just right for very little kids. I would definitely consider doing it again next year and adding phonics/math.

When I first heard of academic redshirting a few years ago, I indulged in some judgmental thoughts about the families that did it. I assumed that they wanted their kids to be more competitive compared to their peers, I think? Of course, a few years later, I now have friends whose children are kindergarten/1st grade aged, and seeing up close how people navigate the massive urban school system where we live has been humbling and eye-opening. Back when I was Judgy McJudgerson about redshirting, I had no idea that Kindergarten in this system is rife with homework, early academics, and test prep. I can totally see why people hold their kids back from that until they think they're developmentally ready. In fact, to complete the circle of my hubris, finding out about how "academic" (eta to add here: I think many young kids are absolutely ready to learn to read, etc., but I think it's pretty common for kids, even the ones who are ready to do academic work, to not yet be ready for the whole bottoms-in-seats-for-hours classroom environment) early grades here are has been a strong component leading my family think we might end up homeschooling, something I had never even considered! Like I said, humbling. :tongue_smilie:

I totally agree. Even though I am entirely secular in my approach to education and Ruth Beechick is not, this book is the most practical thing I've read about early childhood education. I especially love that she basically tells you to calm down and hold off on explicitly teaching reading for a few more years. OP, what about the Wee Folk Art curriculum? It's very gentle, quasi-Waldorfy, and free! I looked at a lot of things for my preschooler and ultimately concluded that while I do want to do something to give our days a (very mild) structure, I don't really feel drawn to early academics or worksheets or letter of the week type crafts. Wee Folk Art is a nice balance. Even if you only use the book suggestions, I think they are generally very high-quality and worth reading.

My Latin is older than I care to admit, and I learned with classical texts, not ecclesiastical Latin... which is a long way of saying I could be very wrong, but: "Quoniam confirmata est supernos misericordia ejus" I would write that as: quoniam confirmata est super nos misericordia eius So, in the same order: whereas confirmed is upon us compassion his Or, less clunkily, but more literally than the translation given, something like "Whereas his compassion toward us is confirmed".

I'm curious about this program as well! Can anyone who has the pre-level 1 program give any insight as to what you actually need to do the work? Do you need everything in the basic package, or...? Maybe I'm just super cheap, but the price of even the basic package gave me sticker shock. That seems like a lot of money for something that isn't designed to take a kid all the way to reading. Do people feel like it's worth it?

I'm very curious about this, too. I recently stumbled on a weird trove of videos on Youtube by accelerated homeschoolers. I've found them really mystifying, since it seemed clear (to me) that these particular families were not actually educating children who were outliers in the genius department, but who were instead rushing their pretty normal kids as fast as possible through a mediocre education in order to get a piece of paper from an online/for-profit school. I found this so baffling that I did some googling, and discovered to my amazement that this is A Thing. The families doing this all seem to have a similar plan: push hard through basic work, "go to college" at 12, be done by 16. The colleges mentioned are pretty much all of the online/for-profit type, with a healthy dose of testing out of various subjects. So I too wonder if this idea has an origin point somewhere. It seems too specific to just be an array of families coming up with it separately. Curious! (I mean no offense by any of this, and of course there are children who are legitimately very accelerated, etc. I just find it perplexing. A central reason to homeschool, for us, is to be able to provide an academically rigorous education in the ordinary amount of time. Looking for ways to provide a mediocre education is less time seems entirely backward to me.) ETA: I missed this the first time around: Interesting! Is this the book? http://www.amazon.com/No-Regrets-Homeschooling-Earned-Masters/dp/0962361100

I would definitely read a modern update! I'm interested in CM, but find her writing challenging to extract information from. And a lot of the people talking about her ideas today are - exactly! - very into lace. I'd love someone to thoughtfully discuss the challenges of nature study when living in a mega-city, for instance. I'd love to take my kid down to the picturesque meadow for sketching of dappled shadows, but alas.

Hah, your title made me laugh. I totally go down the "But is this book terrible? Where are the good books???" rabbit hole when researching. Someone here on the WTM fora (I'm sorry, I can't remember the username) linked to what I thought was a really smart thing to do with younger elementary kids: http://myfamilyiseternal.blogspot.com/2010/07/literature-based-geography.html She maintains a great list of books set in different regions and cultures. I think that having a wall map or a globe and working through this list would provide all the social studies you need, plus create an excellent grounding in geography for a little kid, setting you up to do SOTW afterward (if you wanted.)

If anyone with little kids is reading this far into the thread: do you have any tips for families with very young children who want to start out on the right science foot? I'd like to include some science in our read-aloud rotation, but I've found a lot of science books for the pre-K set pretty disappointing, a lot of "experiments" that (IMO) don't teach anything in particular. I'm also wondering if it would be worthwhile to read BFSU this early. My own science and math foundations are... not superb. Not terrible, but not as solid as I'd like them to be. I want to be sure I don't tell my kid about math and science in ways that are either inaccurate or confusing!

I'm not sure I understand what a non-literature-based system would look like. Could you give an example of the kind of thing you're thinking about? When I think of it, I imagine something like... oh, a large project like "Build a chicken coop". Then you could break down that process into weekly sections, and each section would require a research part (what is the history of raising domesticated animals, what kind of math do you need to calculate the slope of a roof) and practical parts (going to the lumber yard, learning about the different kinds of paint you might use, assembling nest boxes). Or could you do something where the kids each research, write, and assemble their own books on topics of interest to them? Basically, I think it would be easier to have one large project that you break down into weekly and daily segments than to try to have something new every day...?

I'm reading Ruth Beechick's "The Three R's" right now. What she says about reading is essentially that there's an "optimum time" for picking up reading, and while that time may fall very early in some children: (I am totally guilty of having those thoughts, that's why I think Beechick's ideas are valuable for me to mull over.) She also says, and this is, I think, something that also shows up in Charlotte Mason's ideas and although perhaps phrased differently, in Waldorf: I also wonder, based on recently reading some things about boys in the American school system, if part of why places like Finland have such outstanding school scores is that they start later, and that later start allows boys (who are often hit the optimum reading window later than girls) to come to reading when they're ready, instead of when it's still slightly forced. Anyway, it's also hard for me to back off my own overeager instincts toward "Let's do real academics! Worksheets! Sticker books!" but I do find R.B.'s writings pretty convincing. But I think that for my own sanity I need to have a little bit of a plan for what we're going to do during the week, even if it's just the Wee Folk Art-style very laid-back natural learning.

I'm slowly easing my way into some preschool thoughts. With my almost-3-year-old little boy, my vague plans for the fall include: -modified Wee Folk Art curriculum -process-oriented art projects a la Maryann Kohl -"science" projects and sensory activities I'm mostly hoping that the Wee Folk Art curriculum (with some tweaks) will help me plan a one or two-hour segment of the morning - first we read a book, then we do a project, etc. - just to give some shape to the day. My kid is awesome, but pretty energetic and intense. When I try to think of things to do as we go along, it doesn't work as well as when I have an idea of what we're doing each day in advance. My plans don't really include anything academic at all. I had originally thought I would also introduce a letter each week, but now I'm backing off from that. I find Ruth Beechick's ideas about reading fairly persuasive, so now I think that maybe I need to put the brakes on my own nerdy instincts and just hold off on talking explicitly about letters for at least another year. I have to admit that it's very tempting to take a more academic approach and talk about letters and numbers. I'm trying hard to suppress my geeky urges, though!