It clicked for my DD when I made cards with simple two letter words (it, in, if, on, up, at). We then went through them each day until she was sounding them out. Having just two sounds to put together was far easier for her and from there she easily switched to three letters.

My dd is about the same age as yours:) I agree, "I" really isn't a sight word. "I", "a", and the occasional "O!" (old hymns and such!) are the only lonely vowels you'll ever see. You say the long sound (which also happens to be it's name, for vowels). For "the", I just told my daughter the sound for "th" and said you'll say a long "e", just like in me, she, we, he. And because we're lazy, we say "thuuhhhh", but she can say whichever she wants. Then I made made a little poster with a couple pictures that said, "The cat. The cat sat. The cat and rat." I underlined "the" and stuck it to the wall across from the toilet:) She'd sit there and read it to herself and it stuck very well:) She does have it memorized now, but she knows why we say it that way. Sight words drive me batty, though:) I don't do them.

I have no idea. But I have ordered from abebooks.com which is the same idea as the used books on amazon. What I've done is searched for a book I want, then select one of the results and searched for other books under that seller. I like your idea though! It would be easier to do it that way!

CBD has some sample pages, though not of all levels. Rainbow Resource also has a few in the 1998 and 2003 editions. I haven't used them, but I'm trying to choose workbooks too:)

We had tadpoles a few times when I was a kid. A couple times we had some toad tadpoles which were really tiny. We kept those in an aquarium without a filter. I do remember, as mentioned above, that they had to have places to sit above the water so they wouldn't drown. This was about the time they started keeling over. Once they were toads they started dying off pretty fast so we had to let the remaining ones go. I'm pretty sure we fed them fish food. I also have vague memories of some other type of food... like a pellet shape... what would that be for? Maybe it was our hermit crab food? Not sure if we gave that to them or not, though (which is no help to you!). We also had some frog tadpoles which were MUCH bigger. We kept those in the backyard in an old kid swimming pool. They were pretty cool. Started to grow legs. Then a raccoon came in the night and dismembered them around the yard. That was rather traumatic :ack2:

I don't have my room set up yet, but I do have a place designated to use eventually. Since you mentioned the shelves from Ikea, I thought I'd pipe in and say that I'm hoping to get some Billy bookcases http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/categories/range/10364/11685/ As of right now, I'm thinking of basically lining a whole wall with bookcases, either three of the wider, normal-width ones, or two wider and one narrow. You can add an extension piece to the top if you want an extra shelf. You can also buy doors for them, which I thought would be a nice way to help tiny hands to resist the temptation of pulling everything off the shelves! I'd like to put doors on the bottom half and leave the top open.

I didn't read all the replies, so this is simply in reply to the OP:) I'm not sure what to vote... I was against them, finally read them, loved them, but still wouldn't want my children to read them until they are much older (teens, at least).

Ahh, yes, that too:) I think that probably follows the thought that if you're going to support an argument (or any statement), you need to have more than one point to hold it up. I agree that it can be very annoying at times:) But that IS the rule! :D

Oh, I also meant to say that it looks like he's doing good, though!!:) And ultimately, the point of an outline is to organize all the points you want to make in a paper. If your points don't flow smoothly, neither will your paper:)

I haven't done a real outline in a long time. But I seem to recall that each point is supposed to be in the same form. Like all complete sentences or all not. For example, his main points are: I. Greeks asked questions II. Early Greeks wrote lists of kings and events III. Philosophy teachers IV. Greek entertainment The first two tell us something that the Greeks did. But the second two do not have that same form. I'm sure someone else will know if I'm remembering that correctly or not?

We read Three Young Pilgrims by Cheryl Harness not that long ago. It was very good! I also want to get Wee Sing America. We had it growing up and now I want it on cd!:) Now I'm off to look up the things you're using!:)

PMing you...

Singing Science is on my iPod!:)

Oh, A Fly Went By! I never would have thought of that one:) She's not quite ready for it, but getting close. I remember thinking that one was sooo boring when I got it as a kid, but I do think it's still in my mom's attic:) I think I was probably too far above the reading level at the time.

Thanks everyone!! I think we'll step up our reading time a little bit right now, and definitely work in lots next year!! :)

How often do you have your K'er/1st grader read out loud to you? Like from early readers, not just sort sentences and words during a phonics lesson. My DD is doing K-level phonics right now, plus I'm thinking ahead to next year. Right now I have her read a little bit to me (like one Bob book) about once a week. That seems to be working out well for now, but I am wondering how much we should shoot for next year. Daily? Weekly? A few times a week? Just curious what you all do:) She'll be 5 then, the rest of her work will be Kindergarten level, although we'll be doing 1st grade reading.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mep-homeschoolers/

I'm not familiar with this at all, but Horizons has a PE book. http://www.aophomeschooling.com/horizons/electives/physical-education/jpe002.prod ETA: sample page http://www.rainbowresource.com/product/Horizons+Physical+Education+Grades+PK-2/020784/1236893207-747983

What are your favorite websites?:) I'd just like some simple, basic, easy projects and experiments for the kindergarten level. Like making a volcano with baking soda.... really simple stuff that illustrates the things we're doing. I've looked at some books, but it would be nice if I could find some online (free!) resources.

RightStart has good samples on their site. http://www.alabacus.com/pageView.cfm?pageID=272 and see "Downloads" on the left-hand side. I'm in the same boat... not good with math at all and worried that I'll mess up my kids if I don't pick the right thing! My DD and I did a couple lessons in the RightStart sample and at first I thought it would be perfect. But as we did them, I found I didn't like the way it was set up for the teacher. And while my DD did fine, I didn't find that approach to really be a perfect fit for her. So the lessons were very helpful. Also, you can contact Saxon for samples. The scripting would drive me BATTY. I just couldn't do it. But many people love it! So we're going to play with cuisenaire rods and we've just started Singapore EarlyBird. I don't have any advice for choosing, but thought you might find the samples helpful!

Wow... I had no idea I was SOOOO clueless about those countries! I can't believe how badly I did!! I bookmarked the page so I can do a few times and actually LEARN them! lol:) Actually, I really don't know most of the countries of the world... does anyone know of other games like that??

Next year I'm going to use The Usborne First Encyclopedia of Science for science-specific topics. I think we'll do one page spread per week. For nature/world science, we're going to use Usborne First Encyclopedia of Our World and DK Nature Encyclopedia. They cover the same topics (rainforest, desert, etc) so we'll read an usborne section at the beginning of the week, then later read the corresponding DK section, color a picture, do a project, watch a video, whatever I chose for that section:) I'm thinking about getting Janice VanCleave's Play and Find Out Big Book of Science Projects, or some similar experiment book. I'm excited about what we're going to do:) I love the books and they will be really easy to just pick up and read, with just enough information for the grade level.

Could you mark the incorrect words afterward, then have him look them up in a children's dictionary either together or by himself, depending on his level? I don't have a 2nd grader yet, so it's just a thought I had as I read. Might be a totally useless idea, in which case, just ignore me;) It might be a good way to encourage that independence!

You could look them up online and tell her... You're question got me curious so I looked it up myself, since I don't want to get a book right now. Wiki has interesting info:) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monday http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuesday etc...

Oooh, thanks for the amazon recommendation! I didn't realize they had the 4-for-3 promotion!