Just another plug to check out educationunboxed.com. There are lots of great videos there for using the rods, especially early on.

Just to clear up some vocabulary (and, possibly, I am the one confused here). I've seen "discovery" used pejoratively in this thread. My understanding of "discovery" math is not that concepts and algorithms aren't taught but, rather, the student discovers them inductively. I was under the impression that the AoPS materials were on this model (and, from what I gather, that is a highly-regarded program) and I would describe Beast Academy that way as well. I learned geometry this way in school and it was the one year in high school where I actually learned something and excelled. Someone asked if there are language programs where one is asked to "discover" grammar. We use Cambridge Latin which is a "whole to parts" or "reading" method and I might also describe it as a "discovery" approach. But the student isn't asked to invent something new. The student is taught the grammar. But generally the student has kind of figured it out already. Perhaps I am the confused one and, if so, please educate me! But I have seen "discovery" used as a descriptor for a valid pedagogical approach in other places here. In this thread it seems to be attached to the "bad guys."

If money were no object and we're talking just about schooling: --we'd outsource the kids' music lesson. We diy-it right now and that's only going okay. --I'd get come cleaning help. Not enough so the kids wouldn't have chores but enough that I had just a bit more energy left over --I'd buy a lot more books. 3000 is not nearly enough when the local library is so crummy --we'd road trip/travel a LOT more. we love it but can't swing the gas and hotels right now

I felt super-confident about homeschooling until I started! But I am recently in a place where I feel, I don't know, sober confidence, maybe? I feel good about what I'm doing right now, I feel open to re-evaluating that if and when necessary and I feel confident that other families have a lot of other valid ways to accomplish goals similar to mine. And I'm about five years in. My oldest is going into fourth and when he was pre-k every kid his age was in school so we did a co-op that year. I've been in school mode since then. So maybe Ellie's on to something with the five-year thing. But, day-to-day, there's plenty of cluelessnes.

Yikes. My cart is filling up fast. I always try to buy from Better World when I buy used from Amazon. I'm embarrassed to say it never occurred to me to go right to the site. Do they have sales like this often?

This is what I say as well. But for dh "this" means the one we just had and next means the next one to come. When I think about it, his way makes more sense, but I can't break years of habit. I'm from New England and he's from the Midwest. Is it a regional thing?

We do the Kirkland brand beans although the price went up recently. And we like the cheapest stuff at TJ's as well "Joe's" Brand or something. We prefer the medium to the dark, though, and we are all about lots of flavor in our coffee.

Controversial topic? Do people get in fights about this stuff? I guess I'm somewhere in between: utensil canister two cutting boards olive oil/butter dish (sometimes) knife block oatmeal/flour canisters cookbooks Brita dispenser The the last two would live somewhere else if I had the choice. I have a small apartment and the kitchen takes up an unnecessarily large percentage of the square footage and has a poor design so that it's mostly wasted space. Grrr. Anyway. I don't like a totally empty counter-top unless there is only one stretch of it.

For books I need Right Now, I generally buy used from Amazon. I'm okay with buying "good" books or even "acceptable" if there is a detailed description. I find lots of stuff for a penny. But mostly we stalk big used book sales in the summer and library sales and yard sales.

I would pick a cheap learn-to-read program. You can look around for specific ideas here. We use WRTR which is the Spalding Method. Then I'd get some Cuisenaire rods and do the games/activities on educationunboxed.com. That's probably under $50 for the year. Otherwise I'd just do plenty of read alouds. I think people stress way too much about kindergarten. If you are thinking at all about long-term home schooling, just use it as a time to get to know you and your dc's preferred rhythms (while keeping in mind that it will all change as you both grow). And have fun!

Thanks-- I'll definitely check this out. I knew the Hive could point me in the right direction :)

Thanks for the thoughts--this gives us a few more things to think about. We're not exactly eager to have real estate investment. We're more looking at long-term accessibility for our son and wondering about different scenarios for dealing with possibly having to upgrade our home while the market is still less-than-wonderful. Since we have some experience managing rental property, it wouldn't be taking as much of a leap as some to expand that a bit. We're definitely good with the IRS on our current place though I hadn't considered the possibility of higher insurance and mortgage rates so we'll look into that.

I'm finding it kind of hard to get good information on google about this and we're not ready to talk to any banks yet. We currently own a three-family home and live in one level while renting out the other two. We have some ideas that might make it work as a long-term home and we're not anxious to move if we don't have to but our oldest is handicapped and the accessibility needs just might not pan out here. We are rapidly paying down debt and dh should have a significant raise coming in one year. In two or three years we would have significantly more buying power than we had the first time around so we're looking at all our options. Though we only bought two years ago, the market here has continued to drop (it's busy, but also losing value) so we are only barely keeping from being "underwater" on the house with paying a tiny bit extra each month on the mortgage. So I'm not thinking we're going to have a ton of equity in the house in two years and I'm not sure we'll want to sell--depends on how the market looks here. Is anyone familiar with what the bank will want if we want to keep our current house as a rental and buy a new home for ourselves? Will we need to move out first and have existing tenants in all units? Will the prospective rent from the first house count as income? Or will we be held to a higher income standard because of the increased debt load even though one house would be income-producing? And, really, what else can you tell me?

I think most people use Miqon as a supplement because it is so different from so many other math programs out there. Either people love something different but also really want what Miquon has to offer, or they feel funny committing to something off-beat so add in something traditional. But there are definitely a few families here who use only Miquon. Your 4yo sounds just like mine. Normally I don't rush school and don't do anything except learn to read for kindergarten but he's so bright and just begging for school already so I'm going to do Miquon with him. We actually already started and my older kids are liking it as well. You really don't need to worry about any gaps with a k'er, especially a young one. Just have fun with it and move at his pace and then you can add in something down the road or switch programs later.

Definitely start her where she's at and don't let the levels throw you. Third grade is not "too late" to be starting WWE right from the beginning and an older student can generally do more each day, anyway.

Does anyone know the age ranges for the older and younger classes? I'd been wanting to go but we're having a crazy summer and I didn't want to stick dh with all the kids. But now I'm thinking maybe I could bring my older two. They are six and eight. Also, my older is in a wheelchair though he's cognitively normal and independent. I assume the facility is all accessible since it's a college, right? ETA: Looking at the class topics for kids, I'm sure my 8yo would like the older sessions a lot more even if half the material is over his head. But I'd love some feedback about it.

I actually ditched my cell phone entirely. As our contracts were coming up for renewal we considered getting two smart phones but ended up with one cell and Vonage. But I'm home a lot and I have a (gifted) iPod Touch which runs on wifi so I can text when I have wifi. It's been a pain once in awhile but, mostly, we deal. It saved us $50/month and we only had two "dumb" phones before.

Yes, this is what I love about Spalding--I feel like I really know the material now and could pass on this knowledge. It's very rewarding. And some days, there aren't many other rewards! And, yes, I hope I'm still patient about explaining stuff once my kids are grown up :)

Oh, yes, you can certainly easily use c-rods to teach with Singapore and we often do.

Ellie meant to learn four phonograms a day. Once you get to the spelling list you can do a certain number or words each week, depending on your dc's ability. WRTR recommends working toward 30 but, of course, it's fine to do fewer words each week, especially at first.

Oh, I know! I didn't mean to make light of the challenge. I was there, too. And there are a hundred threads here to illustrate that people find this challenging. I do think Ellie sometimes makes light of how un-obvious it is to the uninitiated but she more than makes up for that by patiently and repeatedly explaining the same things over and over and over again :) You can see why there is money to be made in designing curriculum that does all the lesson planning and scheduling and scripting. Not that I'm begrudging anyone who makes money by providing this service. There's nothing wrong with using that kind of material and it has served me well at different seasons. But I do think Spalding is worth it--hang in there! And good luck unpacking. We moved 11 times in 8 years. I don't miss those days.

We are go-with-the-flowers who school year round, roughly 5 weeks on, 1 week off. Most subjects I do for a certain number of minutes and we pick up where we left off last time. I promote my kids to the next grade level in the fall based on their age and not their ability. Then I just use the levels of their curriculum as a rough gauge as to how they're doing. If my fourth grader were only part way through a "level 2" math, for example, I'd know that something was up in math and I'd evaluate: do I let that subject slide too much? can we handle more minutes a day? is he really struggling with this subject? For the most part my kids work ahead of grade level and maybe that's why this approach works for us. But going year round means that we get more weeks to school--at least 40 rather than 36. And we have no long vacation during which my kids forget stuff.

We borrowed an 8% down payment from family. We used a local urban homeowner's program and didn't have to have pmi. I know we're really fortunate, there. We kind of had to buy in an emergency and I would much rather have paid 20% down but we are repaying the entire down payment as well as a good bit of student loan and car debt over the first five years of owning our house (two years in, now) so we're doing well. We don't know if this is our last house and I'm looking forward to having more potential buying power once our debt is gone. ETA: we also had closing costs half covered by the seller.

Fyi, the BA folks are asking for some feedback about the solutions portion of the book over on their FB page.

WRTR will seem more explicit and step-by-step the more you work with it. I promise. I didn't believe Ellie at first, either :) I started Spalding with a 3rd grader this year. We learned the phonograms while remediating manuscript writing. We did it the exact Spalding way but it only took about a week to get it all down because he was older. Then, I think, I did the same thing over again but with cursive since we hadn't started that yet. Then we spent a day learning how to mark words. Then I started dictating/discussing rule pages according to the instructions in Chapter 5 for "older students." My ds is a s-l-o-w writer so it took awhile. Then we started in on the spelling list from the beginning. He'd placed into level N, I think. So we flew through the early words but we still did them to learn the rules and markings. The tricky part about Spalding, to my mind, is picking the moment to take the leap of faith and dive in. It really does make more sense once you are doing it and you can get there fairly well by doing your own notebook. But, to a certain extent, you just have to jump in.