Yes, we both speak English natively and DH is monolingual. I only live in Germany from age 2 to 14, and was very bilingual while I was there (even stronger in German until 5th grade, when they switched me out of German schools), but lost it upon returning to the US. It took a lot of work for me to again get to the point of being able to have full conversations with folks in German. Is it bad that I'm not sure I'd care very much? I mean, sure, I'd absolutely feel like I wasted a TON of effort and work teaching them German these last five years, but my main goal is to get them bilingual -- not to get them bilingual in any particular language (i.e., German). I do German because it's what I'm most able to do, but we don't have family over there or anything for which they really need German at this point. If they ended up bilingual in Russian and English, I think I'd be just as happy (even if I have to get over feeling like I put out a ton of work for nothing). :) ETA: I hope that didn't come across the wrong way. It's just that, as someone who hadn't used German for 15 years before having kids, I have to work my tail off if I want to teach them German well, and it might not actually be so terrible to get them bilingual without having to work myself quite so hard.

I also got rid of later editions to buy the first. For me, the first edition described the method better without relying too heavily on prepared curriculum recommendations. In particular, I homeschool bilingually, and really love the WTM description of the classical education where you rely primarily on subject books from the library, because I can adapt that to my bilingual needs. I think curriculum recs are great and all (and I'd love to see some mention of spalding in there, because I only found it after trying half a dozen phonics programs with my boy and having them all fail...), but I just felt that it got to be too curriculum focused.

This is more or less what I wondered about. If we were to move to a third language country, I wonder which language(s) we'd be most likely to keep/acquire and which language(s) we'd be most likely to lose. Is it most likely to be the parent's native languages (since they'd already speak English well at the time of the move and will be visiting frequently) and the cultural language? Or is even that too optimistic? I know that things will only get harder as the kids get older with respect to minority languages. That's why I come here to gain wisdom from all you folks who've walked this road before us! Thanks so much for all the input!! :)

I should clarify - we're not "choosing" where to go necessarily. We're being considered for a couple of jobs that have very set locations, so it's not really an option to move to a German speaking area of Europe that's not Germany. :) I'm also not interested in tempting fate by going against the legal situation in any given country. I'm more just glad to know that - were we to move to a place where homeschooling is allowed, and were we to decide to continue down that road - I wouldn't be depriving my kids of the opportunity to learn the local language as well. Now a hypothetical question (since it's doubtful we actually will be able to determine the outcome): would you prefer to move to a minority language country and strengthen your kids' bilingualism in that way, or would you prefer to move to a 3rd language country (where you'd be learning the local language as well) and hope to raise trilingual kids? FWIW, I still struggle to keep my kids in "German mode" at home with me, but my 6 yo can converse completely in German with a German-native babysitter for entire 3-hour playdates (and my younger kiddos are developing in German slightly faster than he was at their age). So I'm not really worried about their German fluency at this point, even if it's always an uphill battle, but it is clearly weaker than their English. My biggest concern would be that I wouldn't have it in me to maintain the German if we moved to a 3rd language country.

Yes, I know we'd have to look into things. I know there are a number of countries in which homeschooling is illegal, but there are exceptions for foreigners, depending on their status. It's not clear to me yet what all the exceptions for foreigners are. :) ETA: Though I see now that Germany and Bosnia don't allow foreigners any exemptions either, so you're right that this'd be a moot point there. So maybe just assume we're talking about Russia where it's actually legal. :)

My kids are 6,4,2, and 4 months. We would be planning to stay long-term (minimum would be 5+ years, more than likely considerably longer).

So our bilingualism has always been one aspect of why we want to homeschool, but not the only one. I really like the "more time to play" during early years, but am especially a fan of homeschooling because you can tailor your kids' education. My oldest struggled with learning to read but is a math whiz, and that's not even remotely a problem when teaching him at home. I didn't have to hold him back in math to match his reading, nor did I have to rush his reading before he was reading. It was a beautiful thing. So now my family and I are considering some opportunities that might have us moving. We're in the very early stages at this point, but it's got me thinking about what the future of our homeschool would be if we did move. In particular, we wouldn't be moving to another country that speaks our majority language, so the two situations that we'd be in if we were to move would be (a) to move to the country of our minority language, or (b) to move to a country whose language we don't know at all. It seems that, in either case, the best way for my children to learn and assimilate the culture and language is to attend the public schools. So my goal of raising bilingual (or even trilingual, in the case of (b)) children is best achieved by sending them to public school, but then I have to give up on my goal of homeschooling for all those other reasons that I want to homeschool. It's possible that our homeschooling decision would be out of our hands, based on other factors (in that I might have to or may not be able to), so it's possible that these considerations are moot points. But I'd love to get input from you all on the issue! Thanks! ETA In the first situation, at l least am confident that the German schools are good, even if they won't offer the individualism that I love with homeschooling. In the second case, I don't even have any idea what schools in Russia or Bosnia are like and would gladly hear from anyone with experience with them.

Wow. I had no idea there could be so much controversy about Spalding! I guess I'm not super informed about different ways to teach reading or spelling. I'm teaching my first with Spalding and it's working great. I've stuck to the method pretty closely - the only change being that (try as I might) I couldn't reconcile the "y" at the end of words like "happy" and "puppy" as being a short "i" sound. He loves the rules and structure and being able to pick his own library book at this point. We tried several other methods, and they worked poorly. My second child is 4 and has absolutely no interest in learning to read yet, but it slowly learning to recite the phonogram sounds. Presumably, I'll do with her what I did with her brother: start trying something, and switch if it doesn't work for her. :)

I read that article before starting too and also thought she had some valid points. That being said, I wanted to stick to one program (not combining several), I wanted it to be inexpensive (already spent too much money on phonics programs that didn't work for us), and liked the proven track record of Spalding. I know it's easy to get consumed by trying to figure out what's best. I'd encourage you to try to relax about it. :) You've put a lot of effort and time into learning Spalding, it sounds like. Try it for six months and just see what happens. Your guy is young enough that you could certain switch later if you'd like. (I've a vague idea that I'll add in an additional formal grammar program when we get to that point, because I need grammar to be taught explicitly, for my own reasons.) Spalding really isn't that hard once you read the manual a few times and just jump in. :) We spend FAR less than three hours a day on it!

PS. I can't recall which cards I printed. Just some free ones I found online. I do know that they didn't match up exactly, and so I did have to modify a few of them to match the ones in WRTR because they did stuff like "er" can also say "air" like in "very" or "where", but WRTR is very clear that when the sounds made are actually separate (in "where" the "e" and "r" in the middle actually just make their normal sounds, so they're not ONE phonogram there. I'm not sure I'm making sense, but I hope I am, since you've already read the book.

I should've added that we only did 5 new words a day when we were first starting, because it was so much slower. At the beginning, we started with only the phonogram cards and writing each day (with proper letter formation). We had some "anti-reading/phonics" to work through, that you probably picked up on from my other post... Once he had most of those learned, we started the writing of words. Our lessons are incredibly basic at this point, honestly: I wash dishes with the word list propped up nearby so I can view it. I give him a spelling word, sometimes I make up a sentence, but sometimes he really wants to, so I let him (I'm not sure that' technically "allowed"... but it helps him get into it!). Then we sound out the syllables, sound out each syllable, and if there's a sound that could be made by multiple phonograms, I tell him which one it is (e.g., when sounding out "how", I make sure he knows that "ow" sound comes from the phonogram that says ow and oh - I don't know the "right" way to write sounds phonetically - sorry!) -- as he gets better at spelling, I have to do this less and less often. He just seems to be learning when to use which ones (e.g., when we use "ea" vs "ee" for that long e sound). When a relevant rule comes up (e.g., word ends in l or s so we double it after a short vowel), we just talk about it. And, of course, I avoid saying any of this "long vowel" and "short vowel" mumbo jumbo with him. He took right too "first sound", "second sound", etc. So that's also how we talk about the rules as they come up. Sometimes we review words before doing new ones, other times we do it after. Sometimes we alternate the writing of new words one day with reviewing old ones the next day. I don't "test" him very often, like she suggests, because I know exactly where he's struggling since I only have the one student. :) Either way, the most motivating thing for him has been getting to the point where he could actually read a "real" (library) book on his own (even if I did talk it up a LOT ahead of time to get him excited about it...) So we try to read at least part of a book each day at this point. He actually read "Because a little bug went ka-choo" in its entirety yesterday and thought it was just hilarious. :)

You CAN do this and he WILL learn to read! See my post from a few weeks ago: http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/559607-reading-is-my-favorite-thing-to-do-why-i-now-love-spalding/ 30 a week isn't actually so much. My guy does 10 new words a day in under 20 min usually. I just printed cards on cardstock myself. It's s much cheaper than laminating that I don't mind printing an extra if one gets ripped or something.

Absolutely true and a great point!

Ok! What I'm hearing is that there's no over-arching bad message I'm sending but it's what works for us. That's good. All of a sudden, I just kind of was hit by "Am I somehow communicating school work isn't important or some other message I don't really want to be sending??" After thinking about it, I think I'm actually more patient when I multi-task while working with him, because I'm more likely to give him the extra few seconds he really process things, whereas when I'm focused 100% on sitting with him and working with him, those 5 or 10 second delays FEEL like an eternity and I sometimes jump the gun. And so far, he seems content with the situation (I think he enjoys getting to sit on the counter next to where I'm working :) ), so I'll just go with the flow for now. Thanks all!

I'm not sure I could stick to a long term plan! :) I just have no idea how the kiddos will respond to any given thing. We did lots of playing for my oldest. Didn't even really do real "math play" - he wanted to build tornados with c-rods instead of do any real math with them. :P My 2nd is the same way, so we'll see how the next two respond! So then I started doing Singapore 1a with my oldest when he was 5.5, and he finished it and 1b before he even turned 6 and started on 2a right away. I have this general idea that we'll do Singapore by itself until he's reading well enough to add in Beast Academy, and then he'll do both of those at his own pace (whatever that is). Eventually, we'll go to AOPS, but my real "long term plan" is to have enough "extra" time in HS for him to explore math that's not usually taught in HS but is super fun and cool (number theory, graph theory, tilings, combinatorics, etc.) and to realize that math is so much more than computations and formulas. Personally, I'd rather have him take number theory than trig, coding theory of calculus, etc. I feel like these other areas are "truer" to what math really is at its heart, and I think that he can pick other stuff up if he has the heart for it, but too often, we kill people's love of math by doing just the boring stuff. :)

If you were going to do a "first day of school" questionnaire for your kids that you'd keep until they're adults, what would you include? I don't want too much, but so many questions seem like they're more relevant for a particular age rather than relevant to all. Certainly I'd include what they want their future vocation to be. But what else would be fun to watch evolve over time?

We do all my ds6's school work in the afternoon during his three younger sister's naptimes. Problem is, that's the only time in the whole day where we have "less" going on, so it's also the time when I'm doing whatever dishes need to be handwashed, prepping dinner, wiping down the table, sweeping, folding laundry (else the 1 year old "helps"...), etc. So we sit together, and we talk through his work: here's his next spelling word (we're doing Spalding), here's a sentence, we split it into syllables, etc. Then we do math (Singapore) where he's good on his own for anything which doesn't require too much reading, but we still talk about various aspects of it alot. But all the while, I'm usually working on other things too. I guess lately I've been wondering if that might not be the best idea, and I wanted to ask you all for your opinion! What sorts of problems could this lead to, or is it fine? The main exception to this rule is when he's actually reading me a book, because I usually have to keep my eyes on the page to make sure he's not missing something or skipping something on accident, so we sit together on the couch or bed for reading time.

Is that $7 per family per (time frame like year, semester, etc.)? NM. Found the answer. :) (annually)

Thanks all! These are great ideas! And this is a great point. As someone who grew up in a multilingual culture and who's doing my best to raise bilingual children, I fully understand that no one gains fluency in a few hours a week, no matter how bright they are... But it never occurred to me that other parents may not realize that.

Those look great and exactly like what I want to do! Thanks! Thanks :) I'm in NE and just really want kids to understand how awesome math really is. It's sad to me that - most of the time - you have to be a 2nd or 3rd year math major before you actually get exposed to awesome and fun math topics, so most people never see them!

I'm sorry - I wasn't very clear on this point. I meant that I would like to have as broad of a list of topics/themes as possible, so that I can do a different one each semester and the kids wouldn't have to repeat topics. So one term, I might do codes and cryptography (and possibly error correction if I needed more content). And the next term I'd talk about voting methods and give them problematic scenarios for each different kind of voting method, etc. I definitely don't want to do lots of different topics at once! :) Thanks for your suggestions!

I'd love to start a German foreign language class at our local co-op. They have lots of families there with just one or two "big kids" and lots and lots of "little kids", which means that they could really use more preschool classes. I have lots of resources (board books, music, rhymes, finger games, etc.) that I use raising my own kids to speak German, but have no idea how to translate that into a class. I just don't understand how I'd structure it - should I speak German the whole time? Bits and pieces? Read a book? Translate it? Show them pictures and teach one word at a time? Teach them a song by explaining each word or phrase? I feel clueless! These kids will be coming in with ZERO German exposure, and I'll only have them once a week. Is something like this even possible? Would it be better to wait until they're older and reading (like 1st - 5th)?

I'd really like to teach some math classes at the local homeschool co-op - the kind of classes that get kids excited about math and show them that math is so much more than arithmetic and manipulating algebraic equations. I have the background to teach just about anything math related, but have NO idea what an appropriate level for elementary kids is, which makes it hard for me to even narrow down the topics I'd cover. I'd also like to have a few different themes/topics so that kids could take the class more than once, should they so desire. I've thought about basic codes/crypto stuff (might use the code book as a spine of sorts), basic number theory, artistic stuff like tessellations, tilings, etc., possibly graph theory, possibly some game theory or even fair division, because I think these are all things that (when presented right) kids might have fun getting in to. But I've never adapted any of this down to the elementary level - the lowest I've gone is early high school. I'd love to include some fun math history trivia / tidbits as well. What topics and/or resources would you all recommend? Is it even possible?

Great! I guess that's a lot of great feedback for this site, so I'll look into it more. Thanks so much!

Does anyone do their co-op course registration online? Does it work well? I would really like to contribute to the co-op by coming up with a way to really streamline this entire ordeal. I checked out google forms, but it seems a bit limited in what it can do. It won't notify people if they're double booking (which I can live with), but it also won't list a price and sum a total/invoice that the folks can send a check for or paypal or something (which I think really should be included). Each class does have its own fee, so just saying $20 per class across the board isn't the best solution. There seem to be a lot of expensive options out there... :p Also, the following would be bonuses: ** It'd be nice if each family could fill out the main form once, and then pay once, while still being able to register each kid separately. ** Any option to cap participants in a course, and maybe even add a wait-list for a class that is already full? Am I asking too much? Would it be too pricey for a small co-op? (Dare I even hope for something free?)