MFW - K teaches only short vowel sounds and consonant sounds, and the only sight word I remember is the word "the". MFW - 1st teaches long vowel sounds as well as the 2nd half of their phonics program. It is very gentle in its approach and by doing both the K and 1st program you get a complete phonics program.

AAR teaches reading through phonemic awareness while AAS teaches spelling through phonemic awareness.

My son doesn't seem to mind the learning spelling using phonics rules. I think he just really enjoys the hands on aspect with the tiles. We could have easily skipped level 1 last year and started at level 2 because of how well he is reading and because the beginning step of level 2 goes over all the sounds/phonograms taught in level 1. AAS also offers a 1 year guarantee...if you don't like it or it doesn't work, they give a full refund of the purchase price as long as you buy it directly from them.

We are using ELTL, AAS, and AiG Science this year. My son is doing 2nd grade. We really like ELTL because it is a very gentle approach. AAS is great at teaching spelling through phonics. My son is also reading way above his "grade level" so we don't do an additional phonics/reading program. AiG Science is well liked by my son. We are using the 3 books in the God's Design for Life portion. We have finished the first 4 lessons and I gave him the quiz to see how he was retaining information. He is retaining well and really enjoying it. We used Apologia for science last year and it was too long winded and dry, this is much better. My son LOVES science.

AAS takes us about 15 minutes a day, and the first few levels should go very quickly for your kids.

I would do option 3. My son is a natural reader and after he learned to read(with another program) we went straight to AAS level 1. He is getting the phonics rules cemented that way.

I did the placement test with my son(2nd grade this year as well) and he was 1 or 2 questions away from being in Saxon 3. I took that into account and then went and looked at the TOC of both Saxon 2 and 3. After looking at both, we decided on Saxon 3. The first portion of the book is a review of Saxon 2 concepts so I felt that would be sufficient and if we had to slow down a little as we went through, then it wouldn't be a problem. We are only a few lessons in and thus far nothing has been difficult for him, and he can, thus far, do most of it on his own.

Today was our first day back as well. We only did science and history but it went pretty well. After only 6 weeks off though he forgot how to write some of his letters, so he was frustrated about that. We will do a 2 days a week for a few weeks, then a week off for VBS, then 2 days a week through mid August before we start back 4 days a week.

We did D'Nealian with our now 6 year old first, but then switched to cursive very quickly. We will do cursive first with our other 2 children. Our son writes much better in cursive and he doesn't reverse letters. He also really enjoys cursive. I didn't buy a curriculum to teach it. I printed out my own pages from online and also just wrote letters myself and had them trace them, then copy them. After learning letters individually then we put them together into words.

We tried Apologia last year and it was just too much/too wordy for DS. We have purchased the AiG God's Design and will be using it this fall. I like that each lesson has 3 different levels of reading so that the little ones get exactly what they need while the older kids get a more indepth study, and since it is a 4 yr cycle type system, the kids will repeat everything at the more indepth level.

We have use MFW for K and 1st and have decided to use Beautiful Feet this year instead of Adventures. I always thought we would use MFW all the way through, but I am thinking it really isn't a good fit for our family. We LOVED K but 1st has sort of turned me off to continuing the program. I really like the use of living books in BF and the little bit of notebooking that BF does. We are using a different science than you are planning but also adding in Beautiful Feet's History of Science over the next 2 years. My son LOVES science so I thought it would be a great way for him to learn about famous scientists in history in addition to the regular science curriculum.

MUS Calvert Oak Meadow Singapore Math Apologia Elementary Science books(tried and nope) Abeka MCT LoF Teaching Textbooks any online K12 based curriculum/school

My Horizon Math 1 Teacher Manual that I purchased last spring just says APR '12 printing on the back over the barcode. There is no copyright information inside of it. I don't know what the workbooks said because I cut them apart and hole punched all of them.

We really like the "If You..." series of books.

My son is 6 and started the school year reading at a late 2nd grade level. I did a reading test on him yesterday and he is reading at between 4.8 and 5.6 level(he could read words off both lists just not all the words). The only thing we did this year was to have him read. I would pick books that were at his level and some books that were slightly above his level. When he had troubles with words I would work with him to sound them out so he could learn the word. As he gained more confidence trying to sound words out on his own, he would attempt the words first before asking me if they were right. So I would say to just get them some books that are slightly above their level to challenge them a little.

We will be using the Answers In Genesis God's Design for Science Curriculum this coming year. We tried Apologia and it was too much reading to keep my son interested(and he LOVES science), to dry. The AiG Science is very short lessons and each lesson is written at different levels depending on the grade of the child/children.

I have ordered everything now except for our Bible Curriculum because I can't decide on that. Everything should be arriving over the next week or two!

Hits: All About Spelling lvl 1 Misses: Apologia Flying Creatures Just alright: MFW - 1...it is too easy for DS and he is bored with it, but we need to get through it to make sure he has all the phonics down. Horizon Math 1...we will be switching to Saxon next year

I am finalizing my list but I got math and language arts from Amazon today for a really good price.

I think we have decided on: Math: Saxon 3 Science: God's Design for Life and Beautiful Feet History of Science History: Beautiful Feet Early American History Geography: Beautiful Feet Geography through Literature Spelling: All About Spelling 2 Bible: Precept for Kids How to Study your Bible and God what is your name Handwriting/Reading: nothing formal, done through notebooking and reading chapter books Art/Music: potentially a coop class or two

We have the 4x8 ft shower board as a whiteboard in the basement and love it. It only tends to stain if I leave the writing on the board for a length of time...like our weekly proverb will leave a light shadow but nothing major.

We use a form from Donna Young's site to track books DS reads and then I also use the form to track our read alouds.

Phonics and spelling are similar....Reading via phonics is teaching how to encode letters to sounds, while Spelling is learning how to decode sounds into letters. We use All About Spelling for our spelling curriculum and they teach the letter sounds for each phonogram...the same phonograms that are taught in phonics. We are on level one and DS has learned the basic phonogram sounds and is sounding out 3 letter words to spell them. So I say cat, he sounds it out /c/ /a/ /t/, and writes the phonogram for each sound. It isn't really teaching phonics through spelling, but in can go hand in hand with phonics learning. It might help him connect the dots that he is struggling to connect. All About Reading uses the same phonograms to teach reading.

I would buy and keep looking for a second newer set. I bought a set last year that was the year 2000 at a book sale and got them for "$1 a bag" so I got them for like $4. I JUST got a new set this year of World Book that are year 2008 and paid $20 at a different used book sale.

They aren't Junie B. Jones equivalent, but along the lines of very first chapter books are the Henry and Mudge books. They have chapters but are still very similar to Frog and Toad in length and sentence structure. There are like 28 of them. If animals interest him there are the Old Mother West Wind stories or The Lighthouse Family books by Cynthia Rylant(5 in this series).