I'm a big fan of the Northpoint Ministries podcast on iTunes. You can also get older sermons from their website. They usually get me through a good hill workout on my treadmill.

I voted other. I am fully commited to following God's plan for our homeschooling journey. I am amazed at how many people ask when we plan to send the kids back to school. I always say that when and if the time comes I will know. I am embracing this time at home with my children fully. My youngest daughter's current nightmare is having to leave home to go to college (idea supplied by high school age cousin). I told her she can stay at home as long as she likes (no guarantee that I won't start charging rent at some point though).

Both of my daughters learned printing first. It seemed easier for them to make the connection between writing and reading if they looked similar. I had read somewhere that they started teaching printing in school years ago so that the children could read the Dick and Jane books. I'm not sure if this is true, but it sounds logical. My second grader is learning cursive and really enjoys making her writing assignments "pretty". As far as regressing to what we learned first...well, my experince has been that the invented handwriting styles that I developed for note writing in middle and high school are much harder habits to break. I am stuck with a mixed handwriting style. I am attempting to develop a more classical handwriting style at the same time my daughter is learning. I have a handwriting book from the late 1800s that I acquired from my grandmother. I am certain that I will never spend enough time on my handwriting to make it that beautiful. However, I feel it is important to my children that they not lose the skill of good, legible penmanship. Wow...I wandered off track. Anyway, that's my 2 cents.

Are flash cards a no no? We are currently using Saxon 1 for my daughter and she drills her math facts as they are introduced in the text. We started with doubles, then +1, then -1, plus zero was in there somewhere and we just added the plus and minus twos a few weeks ago. I have her review them as part of her memory work and I check her on them on Friday. She also has a 25 question math fact review each day as part of her lesson. I wasn't really sure she needed that level of review (and she probably doesn't), but she can go through her entire set of flashcards in less than 3 minutes, so she must be doing something right. I'm not sure if the memorization would help with the Singapore Math, but I can already see the benefit in both my first and second grader. Also, mom is getting a little faster at the mental math LOL!

This is also my first year homeschooling. I have a first and second grader. It is nice that I can see where I will be going next year with the first grader. It gives a little perspective. As far as FLL....My daughter finds it very repetitive so we combine lessons when we can. I always schedule for 5 days of lessons, but the book only recommends 3X a week. She enjoys the poems, but is really tired of hearing about nouns. I have to admit I find it a little tedious myself. As I am teaching both the 1st and 2nd grade portions at the same time, I can say that we will probably finish the entire book in 1st grade this year and use something else for 2nd next year. As far as SWA - we read the first page of each lesson and take the pre-test. If she gets them all right, then she just has to do the worksheets and we are moving on to the next lesson. I am more concerned with getting her to listen to the phonetics of the words at this point. We dropped SWB for my second child because I had yet to encounter any rules in the lessons (14 lessons and she hadn't missed a word yet!). We switched to sequential spelling and she is loving it! My first grader is listening in on the lessons and has already improving her spelling. The girls get their phonics rules from our reading program. When they spell a word incorrectly I ask them to pronounce what they have written. Then I have them think of another way that they could spell it. Usually, they figure out their spelling mistakes on their own. We are not doing WWE, so nothing to add there. I hope this helps.

There is a general trend toward increased difficulty, but there is some fluctuation from book to book. The earlier books are around a second grade to lower third grade reading level. The Merlin Missions books (which are the most recent in the series) are at an upper third grade to early fourth grade reading level. The reading levels are those that are determined by the Accelerated Reader program (what you saw in the Scholastic Catalog). I still go to the Accelerated Reader website to get the reading levels of books so I can gauge whether it might be a good fit for my kids. My daughter loves the Magic Tree House series and can't wait for the stage show which is coming out next year.

I'll second this response. We had the tadpole and ordered a larger home from grow-a-frog. I didn't notice that it came with another frog. After a year we had two very large frogs in a 10 gallon aquarium. They are fun and pretty low maintenance. Unfortunately, we needed to move after a year. The grow-a-frog website had information on shipping the frogs back to them. It was a relatively easy process, they send you all you need. I can't remember if we had to pay postage. We told the girls that the frogs were all grown up and we were sending them off to start their own families. They are only translucent when they are tadpoles. The grow up to be normal looking aquatic frogs.

I have the book in my hand right now. I picked it up for the end of the year, but brought it out to answer your question. I skimmed through briefly, and there doesn't appear to be anything objectionable or overtly controversial. I am using the animal book in this series currently and the topics of evolution and dinosaurs were handled in separate sections (separate from the main lesson). These could be easily omitted if that is not what you want to teach your child. I've found the style and pace to be very well suited to our approach to schooling. There are just enough experiments to keep us interested, but not overwhelmed. I hope this helps.