Whatever happened to the group buy? I'm happy to commit to that! It's not in my budget right now to front a group buy but another 6-12 months it will be if someone else doesn't do it first.

I just ordered last week with free shipping. The package is coming UPS. It was $4 to upgrade shipping if I had wanted to. I ordered Friday, the tracking says it will be here Wednesday.

My understanding of the loop, all subjects are scheduled, you work through as many as possible in a day. The next day instead of starting at the top you continue where you left off. The thinking is the first subjects always get done, if subjects are always done in the same order the last subjects often get dropped. If the schedule is looped everything gets hit but maybe not everyday.

Well this thread took off! My boys will be starting 1st grade in August and they can't write uppercase letters and are hit or miss on lowercase letters. They are not fluent readers. I am not panicking. You see we've been in "the system." They both have a "delevopmentally delayed" label in their medical records. I got fed up with "the system" and started refusing serices years ago. Here's what my 6 yr old boys CAN do: Ride a bicycle without training wheels from age 2, even though they didn't walk till >15 months. Sort, inventory and assemble Lego technic sets for ages 16+, all I help with is opening the plastic packages and occasionally pulling stuck pieces apart. They are at a 3rd grade math level, we do everything orally or on computer. They can cook, yes COOK, their breakfast. They do their own laundry. They will bathe, dress and otherwise care for their 3 yr old sister because they want to. In the realm of science their understanding of concepts will boggle your mind. While I'm sure they have the fine motor skills to write they do not have the desire. They also struggle with reading. I have no doubt they will catch up. Some of the greater minds in history were late bloomers namely Einstein and Edison. Archimedes didn't start formal educational instruction till he was older, we all know how that turned out! While my boys may never be an Einstein or Edison they have a few things in common: they are curious, they have been negatively labeled by the academic establishment, and they have an involved mother willing to ignore the system.

It depends on the kid. We dropped everything but reading and math then picked up handwriting again toward the end of the year. My boys have been over the entire lower case cursive alphabet and no uppercase letters. They still struggle remembering how to form all their letters and they hate handwriting :-) Sooo, I have them copy short jokes everyday to practice and some days we "test" using "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog". That is about as much as I have them do, anymore and they'd revolt. We do spelling with tiles. For my guys trying to spell a word and remember how to correctly form each letter was too much. They would get overly frustrated writing and spelling. They are great spellers, it was sad to see handwriting holding them back. All that to say, one small sentence a day is plenty for my hyper boys.

We started with Bob Books then 100 EZ Lessons. Funnix followed :-/ AAR finally saved our homeschool! I have 2 struggling readers, AAR is perfect for them!

I wondering about this too!

We used BSGFAA this year and I'm happy with retention but it fails in the "big picture" aspect. Next year we are doing BSGFAA and Telling God's Story. I'm hopeful the combo will check all your boxes, I'm looking for the same things!

Placemats!

We are currently in the process of building. Our floor plan has a formal dining room. I had them spec out French pocket doors instead of a large opening (so i can hide the mess) and won't have them install all the fancy schmancy chair rails and crown molding. This will be our temporary school room. Our floor plan had 300 sq ft for a 2nd floor bonus room, our builder managed to enlarge that space to 900 sq ft! This space will be unfinished initially but eventually I plan to turn it into my dream school room.

All About Reading took us from tears to cheers!

We have the simple machines kit. Probably not worth the price but they do learn a lot. The TM is helpful. I've looked for used kits with no luck, the prices are close to new and who knows what's missing. I'm not sure we will continue with Lego Ed. The materials are good but not for the price. For some price of the kits I could buy real gears and motors, used mind you, for less and they could build a functioning robot :-/

We use AAR with AAS, when my guys need to pause for AAR concepts to stick we take a break and do AAS. We are enjoying the combo. We do review AAS key cards several times a week even if we aren't doing spelling lessons to keep the rules fresh.

We have the Elementary set and so far so good. The kids like it, I like it. He could have a better editor but the writing doesn't detract from the content IMHO. We are only doing Fred right now, we are changing things up for Summer. We'll go back to MEP/MUS as our spines in the Fall. My favorite part of Fred is the random introduction of advanced concepts. Seeing advance Math notation doesn't phase my guys like it would a middle or high schooler, my kids are so young they haven't learned to be scared of the hard stuff :-) I think Fred could work as a spine for a very dedicated parent, for the average parent the elementary series is best as a supplement IMHO.

Don't do it! I thought it was horrible. The songs are difficult to understand, the recording quality is terrible. I gave ours away, I couldn't in good conscience sell it.

One of my boys does the EXACT same thing For. Every. Word! He goes off on so many tangents all learning value is lost.

I don't recall a lesson without rhyming or phonological awareness. My twins in AAR2 enjoy sitting through AAR Pre1 lessons with their sister. My dd knows all her letters and letter sounds, even so there are some Pre1 lessons she's not ready for, we gloss over those lessons with the intent to come back to them next year. I bought the Pre1 so dd could "do school" like her big brothers. It's a hit, but not entirely necessary.

Double post

It's fun! I enjoy it, my kids enjoy it, it gets used, it is loved BUT it's not necessary. IMHO AAR Pre1 is an enjoyable luxury, if it's in the budget definitely give it whirl, you'll love it!

My kids are only K'ers but I'd pay a premium to outsource handwriting. Without sweet bribes my boys would never put pen to paper unless they were writing instructions for some Lego creation they want to remember.

It doesn't hurt to ask! I hope to be done with book one by Fall. It's slow going, DR Nebel is very verbose...

:-( It doesn't work for me how it's written. I'm painstakingly going through and scripting it. I'm making the layout similar to All About Spelling complete with review cards. I'd share but I'm pretty sure my BFSU "open and go" violates the copyright :-( I wish DR Nebel would put out something open and go, it would sell like hot cakes!

Used curriculum sellers are going the way of used car dealers.

I haven't noticed anything. My library has D'Aulaire books published by BF and some before BF, the original publisher escapes me, I see no notable difference beyond shelf-wear.

We have the simple machines kit with the TM. My kids have learned a lot about gears. The kits are nice but the prices are insane. As far as teacher involvement if you have the TM it's open and go.