My 3 yr old did the same thing, it was disk 5, maybe she knew something I didn't :-)

The text and worksheets are in black and white. As long as you teach instead of the DVDs I think you'll be okay with C rods. When subtraction rolls around you won't be able to turn a c-rod over to show the hole like you can with MUS or Mortensen blocks. I've got both sets, we use c-rods exclusively for fractions. BUT they are figuring out the values of the c-rods and it doesn't seem to be confusing them. fYI we started with the Montesory colors used with MUS blocks.

I've got "More Mudpies to Magnets." It's fun for the little kids. Growing crystals was our favorite activity!

I have a globe as a center piece... It's nice to have handy, you never know when a geography reference will pop up. We also LOVE educational placemats, bugs, birds, weather, and Roman Numerals are house faves.

SWB said it best. I'll summarize. You speed read well what you are familiar with. If you are going to stretch your brain with new ideas you must slow down and digest it.

I have both. My kids listen better to the CD and I don't have to struggle through the names! Next Vol I'll get the CDs only.

Home Depot sells 2'x3' sheets of galvanized steel for $20. You could have a magnetic dry erase board in fashionable stainless steal :-)

I print front/back for 3 kids and just print what I think we'll need for the week and stick it in my teacher binder in a folder for use as single pages.

Somewhat related question. I'm in VA, my NOI is on the fridge waiting for August.... We are starting school in one division and will be finishing in a different division. I'll send an NOI to the new division when we move but do I need to tell the old division we moved so they don't hunt me down for test scores?

This thread is sad. What sort of "free" country is the US when we fear for our children being confronted by authorities if they are out and about during the day?! My kids are young, I'm with them outside our neighborhood. I wouldn't stress over "getting caught" unless it becomes an issue. Of course I wouldn't go looking to make a statement either.

My brain is wired for STEM. I bought TTC to help me! I worked with my Kers last year teaching literary devices but we didn't dive into any meaningful analysis. I think TTC is wonderful especially people like me who need handholding.

My Kers are 6, we are in VA, they were NOT 6 by Sept 30th. When I filed my NOI last year I referenced the law in the NOI and politely said I would not be testing them. I got a nice long reply acknowledging they didn't need to be tested with a bolded paragraph stating they would need to be tested the following year if I continued to homeschool.

I don't see why they wouldn't. I have Mortensen blocks, MUS is a spinoff of Mortensen, Mortensen makes different color unit and ten bars to use for algebra. I think you'll be just fine.

I pad my orders with placemats and posters. It's amazing what a kid will pick up from eating breakfast on Roman Nimerals.

I've been printing, punching, binding, laminating, filing, cutting. Organizing PDFs and sorting audio files. The kids aren't nearly as motivated as I am :-)

Don't sweat syllables.

AAR1 is great so is the Pre1. Why were you only spending one day per letter? Take the pretest for AAR1, if your DD passes then dive in! You'll likely need to spend more than one day per lesson. Other than skipping around on the fluency sheets we have followed the program as designed and it's worked wonderfully!

I have it on my phone, I think it will work on a tablet too. Open the app, take a photo or photos tell the app where to send the document. If you have a mobile device with a camera you can find an app to do your scanning.

The $1.99 TurboScan app has replaced my color scanner/printer! Soo much easier, all pages can be scanned into one PDF doc, I can then print or e-mail or Dropbox or whatever!

It was a holiday weekend in the US, they may be catching up on e-mails this week.

I'm not freaking out. I have two 6 yr olds about 20 lessons into AAR 2. I figure I'll freak out if we aren't "caught up" by 4th grade i.e. the grade sight word kids start to struggle. Some boys are slow to pick up language skills, we've had an incredibly hard time with reading at our house. I'm pleased with our progress in AAR. I admit it's a struggle to compare my kids to PS kids. fTR we started with sight words and that was worse, they were guessing all the time, phonics got my guys reading.

My DH bought me one much to my protest. Now I'd have a hard time parting with it. I love checking all my e-mail in one inbox. My toddler can find what she wants on Hulu and Amazon when I need to keep her occupied. iTunes, instant web searches for quick random kid questions complete with large photos. YouTube science videos, apps for everything. Maybe I'm behind the times but I just found an app that scans documents to PDF, I can e-mail or fax them! We are building a house, that app has saved a TON of time and kid related stress at the P.O. And/or Office store. I have PDF student pages the kids can do right on my iPad using a stylis or just a finger. The eBay app with notifications for saved searches! My kids can call my iPhone with FaceTime! We don't have a home phone. The list goes on and on.

I have the ebook, set my iPad next to my lappy and painstakingly went through every lesson and typed up scripted lessons to make it open and go. I print the scripted lessons. Before I did that I tried teaching from my iPad and it wasn't working.

FlyLady! I have her zone checklists in cozi, they work well for us. www.flylady.net

Pst my order was ~$100.