We like Draw, Write, Now and Drawing With Children (which is a little hard to implement, but worth it).

My kids LOVE manipulatives and we use them for everything we can. I find them annoying, but they really seem to help my kids grasp topics. We use teddy bear counters, pattern blocks, geoboards, coins, mini marshmallows, legos, stuffed animals, checkers, playing cards, etc. We have cuisenaire rods, too, but that's the ONE manipulative my kids don't care for (LOL!).

I don't have any suggestions for your son, but I think I'd skip any formal curriculum for your daughter and focus on helping her learn her math facts cold this summer. There are a ton of ways to work on math facts, and you know your daughter's learning style best, but good old-fashioned flash cards work well for most kids. Work on addition every day until she can do every card in the deck in one sitting without counting anything on her fingers, then focus on subtraction (while still reviewing addition daily). For fun, you could play board games that require adding - Parcheesi, Backgammon, etc. And a little bribery goes a long way (i.e. a meaningful reward once she has her addition facts, another once she has her subtraction facts, and then something really cool when she has both). That will do more to help prepare her for success in 2nd grade math than anything else. As an aside, please be sure to keep working on her reading all summer. Reading is infinitely more important than math at this stage. If you only have the time/energy for one subject this summer, I'd take reading over math.

We pay $25 for a 30 minute lesson once a week. About half of that time is spent with my four year-old, and half of the time is spent with me. Our teacher insists that the parent take lessons, too, until the child is at least six, if the parent doesn't already know how to play the violin. I was annoyed by this at first, but I'm kind of enjoying learning it now (I learned piano as a kid). One thing to keep in mind is that progress is SLOW if your child is younger than 8-10, especially if you have a very attentive teacher and you're using the Suzuki method. We spent many weeks with my son learning to hold a box violin. And then many weeks learning to hold a real violin. And then many weeks learning to hold a bow. He's only now just beginning to play a few basic rhythms on one string of the violin. We practice every day. I'm surprised my son hasn't given up in frustration - playing the violin is SO MUCH HARDER than the piano - but he keeps practicing and showing (very slow) improvement.

We hit this same issue at almost exactly this same point! It was SO frustrating. This is how we solved it: I sat my son down and explained why the math facts are so important to memorize, and how easily they are to forget at his age. Then I told him he could choose how he wanted to work on his math facts. He could do daily XtraMath, the Saxon fact sheet, or the full set of flash cards (up to and including the current fact set). He tried XtraMath and hated it. Now he does the full set of flash cards (addition and subtraction) every day. I've pointed out to him that it takes much longer than if he just did the fact sheet, but he still prefers the flash cards. LOL!

I think it's fine to just let him keep reading the Early Reader books (but try to get them at the public library!). He'll graduate to meatier materials when he's ready. Do you read aloud to him? My DS loves it when I read aloud to him from chapter books he's not quite ready to read yet. It doesn't bother him at all that there are no pictures when I'm the one doing the reading. Occasionally, I discover him reading ahead in our current read-aloud book because he's caught up in the story and wants to know what's coming next. I anticipate this is what will lead him eventually to wean himself from the Early Readers.

DS5 started at age 4 with Alfred's Basic (and an outsourced teacher). He wasn't reading well at that point, but it wasn't a problem. We use the Lesson book (with CD), the Technic book, and the Theory book. ETA: If you can afford it and have the time/flexibility in your schedule, I highly recommend outsourcing music lessons. I play the piano very well, but it was better for my son to be taught by someone other than me. I supervise practice very closely, and honestly end up doing most of the "teaching," but having a third party my son is accountable to each week really motivates him to work hard and learn his pieces. Without outside lessons, I'm not sure my son (or I) would have the motivation to do the daily work required to see him progress.

I have to stay with DS5 and watch closely the entire time, even if he knows exactly what to do and how to do it. I've learned the hard way that if I walk away, he just stares off into space until I get back. Then schoolwork takes longer than it should and he starts complaining. We're both happier if I just ignore the housework for an hour or so and focus on getting him through his schoolwork.

We've done a relatively light homeschool K with DS5 this year while we redshirted him. DS5 will start half-day K at the local public school next fall. For afterschooling next year: AAS FLL ETA: WWE Piano Reading aloud from library books

We were in this boat, too, and decided to keep our son home until he's 6. We'll enroll him in half-day K next year. We know he'll be too advanced academically, but we felt it was more important for him to be socially comfortable. We talked about enrolling him in first grade, but decided we didn't want him to miss out on the fun of K (and weren't anxious to have him be the youngest in his class). Maybe we'll regret the decision. We're hoping the school will be able to work with him academically through the gifted and talented program. Such a hard decision! ETA: Oops! For some reason, I thought this was posted on the Afterschooling board. :blushing: My response isn't terribly relevant to a homeschooling situation. Sorry!

Saxon K has been really fun for both my kids at age 4. No writing, tons of manipulatives.

This is a really helpful thread for me. Thanks for starting it! We ended up redshirting our son, but had the same concerns about how quickly they ramp up writing in our local public school. Invented spelling drives me crazy, and DS hated it when people couldn't understand what he'd written. I decided to start with AAS this year, and plan to add WWE next year, when DS is in K. AAS1 is very basic. My son blew through the first 16 steps in a month, and only that slowly because I won't let him do it every day. I was kind of annoyed at having spent so much money on something he already knew. Now that we're getting into some rules beyond basic, short vowel words, it feels a little more worth it. We take two days to do each step now. First day, we spell the new words with tiles and sometimes write the words on paper (10 minutes). Second day, we write the extra practice words and the dictation phrases (10-15 minutes). We do a quick review of the phoneme/sound/rule cards at the beginning of each lesson. I anticipate slowing down more once we get into AAS2, but for now it's very easy and fun for DS. Your son might be fine starting in AAS2. Level 1 is nice for getting the feel of how the program works and double-checking that your child knows the basics, but probably not 100% necessary for a kid with some prior spelling ability. AAS has a great return program, though, so you might just buy level 1, try it, and return it for level 2 if it's not right for your son.

Amen! My son had a phobia about the letter "l" for a while because of the font issues. Every time he encountered an "l," even in different books where the font was better, he would refuse to read further because he didn't want to guess incorrectly. Arg! Luckily, he got over that about half-way through OPGTR.

It sounds to me like your son would be advanced for portions of Saxon K, but I don't think it necessarily would be a waste of time. It has a lot of geometry, pattern recognition, etc. My sons (with similar counting skills to yours) both flew through Saxon K, but they did learn new concepts from it, and they really enjoyed all the play, manipulatives, and absence of writing.

This is helpful. Thanks! We're also using Saxon 1. We're eight lessons from finishing it. Early on, my son was flying through the fact sheets with no problems, but now that we're doing the harder facts, he's REALLY struggling. It's not unusual for it to take him 15-20 minutes to do a fact sheet. He seems to understand the concepts. I think his brain just isn't ready to keep that many facts available for instant recall. For what it's worth, the teacher's manual says that automatic fact recall is not expected until the end of Saxon 3.

My two boys (both with VERY different personalities and learning styles) are thriving with Saxon math. They KNOW their math facts and are convinced math is easy, Saxon is easy to teach, affordable, and complete. Hooray for Saxon!

Xtramath.com is another (free!) option for practicing basic math facts.

I've used Saxon K with both my boys at age 4. It has zero writing and heavy use of manipulatives, and they both really enjoyed it. The only thing I'd add to it is counting using a 100 chart (which comes with the manipulative kit). We've tried Miquon, but I don't think it's great for kids at age 4. The writing, even limited as it is, could be a little much. Also, I think it's difficult to figure out how to teach Miquon. If I had it to do over again, I'd skip buying the Miquon books. I think Cuisinaire rods are GREAT, though. You should consider buying a couple sets of them and use the videos from Education Unboxed for ideas on how to play with them to teach math concepts.

My son started at age four with Alfred's Basic (Level 1A).

Lloyd Alexander's Prydain Chronicles ("The Book of Three" is the first) are great!

:iagree: The Miquon workbooks are also cheap and easy to follow.

We supplement Saxon with Miquon about one day a week. I don't teach Miquon; I just let DS(5) choose 2-3 pages he wants to try to figure out. He muddles around with it for a while and then asks me to look at his work. We talk a little about which answers are right and wrong, and ways he could approach the problems he didn't understand/try to answer.

We haven't gotten to that level of Saxon yet, but I think I understand what you are experiencing. The first 30-ish lessons of Saxon are review (based on the assumption that you took a summer break and are just now coming back to math). I think you could safely skip them, although it sounds like you've already waded through them! I would expect them to bring in the new material very soon. One of my concerns about Saxon math as we move forward is the feeling of never/rarely having anything "new" or exciting in a math lesson. Saxon introduces everything so slowly and in such tiny increments that it's sometimes hard to notice the transition to new material. For some kids, this is a good thing because there's less of the panic of trying to "get" some seemingly impenetrable branch of mathematics. But it also takes away some of the fun and excitement, especially for naturally mathy kids. So far, I like how effortless Saxon has made math for my son. We'll have to re-evaluate what we're doing if he starts to think math is boring or too slow-moving. For your son in the meantime, I like the suggestion to try to supplement with Khan Academy, Life of Fred, etc. Maybe he'd enjoy the new Beast Academy stuff?

:iagree: The first 30-ish lessons of Saxon 1 are review. Just be aware that the workload REALLY picks up soon after that because they start learning their addition facts and have an added "Fact Sheet" to complete every lesson. Be ready to slow down again when you get to that point.

Hooray! Congratulations!