I did the exact same thing with my oldest, except he was actually slightly older! My oldest misses the cut off for public school by 2.5wks. I figured he would be ready to go ahead and start...I mean, if he had been born 2.5 wks earlier, he'd "have" to. Therefore, he must be ready. ;) I was totally wrong. The same thing happened to us. At first, he enjoyed it and was agreeable. But, a month or 2 in he started to resist. It became a drudgery for both of us. It was stressful and certainly not instilling the love of learning that I was aiming for. :( I got the same advice...put it away till he is 5 in Sept and then start. For you, that might be a full year from now. For me, it was about 8 months. I didn't really believe that was the answer, but I trusted the BTDT moms and my gut and I put it away. 8 months later, when he would have started public school, I pulled it out again. It was a completely different experience! He was SO much better and it wasn't as stressful for us. Mine was about 1.5 months from turning 6 when we started. Through that experience, I've learned that starting formal schooling is actually more about the child's maturity level to handle the work rather than their academic ability to understand it. Without that maturity, they just can't do it, even if they understand it. Allowing him the time he needed to gain that maturity was a great decision. And, I've been very happy with the result of him being on the older side for grade. He is now in 2nd and almost 8. It's perfect for him. So, my advice is the same as your friends...put it away till he is 5 in Sept. :)

Meh, that didn't raise my blood pressure. It made me giggle. She can send her kids to PS if she wants. Hopefully, the schools will get better with her kids there. I will HS mine and hopefully, they will get a good education. Both are legal options here in the U.S. Luckily, people who get a bad education, like she says hers was, don't generally run the country. :D

Your story is exactly what would have happened to my oldest if he had gone to PS. I know he probably would have been labelled. He hardly knew all the letters and it wasn't from lack of exposure either. It was lack of interest. He was only 5...who cares if it takes a little longer...great reason to HS!!!

I have found that almost no matter what I say some people think by HS'ing, I am automatically passing judgement. So, I try to be nice and not say anything negative about PS, but I don't worry too much about it either. I would just say something like, "It works well for our family." If someone wants to know why, I would just say, "we were looking for something different than what the schools offer." If they keep digging, I'd lay it out and let it ride. LOL!! (Assuming you have the time to spare. ;))

I had to giggle at the bolded. Yes, we are crazy...we even do it in a tent. The kids love it. It's a bit stressful for us, but we are making family memories. :) Too funny about the Chocolate. We make s'mores, of course. For the kids, I get plain Hershey's chocolate mini-bars. For me, I get full sized Dove Dark chocolate! My husband came home with one for me earlier this afternoon. I said, "Just one? What if the kids get into it?" (I have one like that...He already found the bag of brown sugar I packed and was shoving handfuls in his mouth! :willy_nilly: ) When my husband had to go out again later, he got me another! :lol: I can't wait to have my dark chocolate s'mores just for Mom. Woo Hoo...it makes it all worth it. :thumbup1:

Okay, now I see there are a bunch of choices. You have to click them to "expand" and open them. They each have their own numbers. Makes sense now. :)

well, now I'm confused because on the page you linked to at the top, it said what I said. *giggling* I guess there is more than one package and I was looking at a different one. I guess it's a good thing I don't order from them. I'm too confused to do it. Or maybe my kids and packing today for a 4 day camping trip with 6 kids 7 and under tomorrow has killed all my brain cells. :lol:

I've never looked closely on the site before, but what I see says 158 orders and 7 more conditional orders for a total of 165 so far. That would mean they still need 35 to hit 50%, right? I'm probably missing something since I've never ordered or looked at the site before.

My RR cart is filled with books to add meat to our curriculum. I'd like to get them from my library, but my library is lacking in books I trust. We use MFW and there is a large book list I could use. But, my library doesn't have most of them. They do have other books on the same topics. But, how do I know they are historically accurate? And, how do I know it easily without a ton of research? I already spent a lot of money on our core curriculum and I don't want to spend a ton more. But, I don't want to teach fluff or inaccuracies either. Ugh! Why can't my library just have the books I want??? :thumbdown: How do you or would you handle this situation? Thanks!! BTW - We can technically afford the extra books. But, it's not like we have money to burn, KWIM. I'd rather not spend it.

Well, when you add that to DHL's crazy shipping methods and everything else, it feels like FOR-E-VER......

Really.....That is very good to know! It doesn't change the fact that there are several books I need that they don't carry. :( It's 5 days they hold it according to what I just read on their site. I don't "normally" (I say that in quotes because we are only in 2nd grade ;)) order anything at all this time of year. We start July 1st and most of my stuff comes from MFW, who is fast. I order in the spring. The reason I'm ordering now is because we are 7wks into our program and it's way too light. We need more. I never anticipated needing to order a ton of books to beef up our program. My library stinks this year too. (I've not had a problem with my library in the past.) I placed my orders for the year back in April. If I had known then what I know now...well...I would have used a different program and I would have ordered it in April. :lol:

Ugh! I have a HUGE load in my cart with them right now. They have been very slow for me in the past too and I'm very hesitant. But, CBD doesn't even have several of the books I need...and neither does Amazon. Plus, the shipping from CBD would be over $20 because it's 10% of the order. So, I am hesitant, but going to do it. *sigh* I did just read the shipping section and it said that orders over $150 would be sent UPS. Mine will be heavy too. Hopefully that will be faster.......

I have no clue how common it is. All I know is I'm very glad that my oldest son's b-day is 2wks AFTER the cut off and my baby boy's is 1wk AFTER. My older son's b-day could have easily fallen on the other side of the cut off. He was definitely NOT ready to be pushed into K. He wasn't ready for any formal schooling at all. I was so glad I had the freedom to wait without even having to think about it. I know mom's of boys on the other side of the line and they wish they were after. My second boy wouldn't have been ready just after his 5th b-day either. He will be on the older side for K too, but his b-day is 3 months after the cut-off here.I'm sure not all boys are not ready, but mine wasn't.

Go check it out! I also have a couple of books from HOD Beyond and Bigger on my short list...a few I can get at my library, one or two for free online and I have at least one or two in my cart at Rainbow. (Rainbow is the cheapest for all this stuff, BTW, especially because of the free shipping. I priced it at other CBD, which doesn't have everything, and BF directly and Amazon has some but not all.) I know you probably have those because you said you did Bigger last year. PM me if you want to chat about it. :D

Interesting. We are in week 7 of Adv. We are "underwhelmed" also. My kids keep begging for more. We finished The Courage of Sarah Noble today, which wasn't supposed to be done till the end of week 8. When I finished my son said, "That's it?? That was so short." :( Now, I have to find a new read aloud till end of next week. I'm in the process of buying a ton of books to add. Our library is not great with the book basket books this year. That is not helping the problem. I'm buying some of the books from the book basket list. But, I'm buying all the Beautiful Feet Early American Primary books that my library doesn't have...which is most of them. Some of them overlap with things in the Adv package or on the book list. I'm buying the guide too because I need a reading schedule or we won't do it. I'm not good at just doing it. I'm going to merge the two programs. It also seems there is more suggestions for writing in BF. I know someone else who added these books. I'm really hoping this is going to save Adv for me. I wouldn't say Adv is a miss. My kids are enjoying it and are retaining. There just isn't enough content and I would like more notebooking with specifically history. I'm going to work on adding that myself...I'm just not great at adding my own stuff...I can add other programs, like WWE, but adding other work I'm not very good at yet. Also, I'm trying to do the science and it just isn't for us. I have Apologia...but that's not getting done either. Science...*sigh* Back to Magic School Bus. LOL!! (They get some science, just not as much as I'd like.) Honestly, I'm really, really sad about the whole thing. When I found MFW before K, Adv was the program that I was most looking forward to. It's a big bummer for it not to live up to my expectations, especially since I loved, loved, loved 1st. So far, everything else is a hit. :)

Thank you!! I got some of them, but not all. I want to complete my collection. :D

My kids are 7, 5, 5, 3, 3 (and 10 months). Ours is very simple. We do one "journal" page for the family. I keep it. On it, I have each day of the week listed and what we pray for that day. EX: On Mondays, we pray for Dad, maternal grandparents, aunt, our family as a unit, and our government (we are studying U.S history). Tuesdays, it's Dad, paternal Grandparents, different aunt/uncle family, our town and something else.... It goes on like that all week with specific things each day including missions on Friday. They are pre-printed and the same every week. Under those, I have lines for writing in other prayer requests as they come up...things that we will pray for temporarily like a sick friend. I can write answers to prayers there, next to the request. I print out a new page each week and it gets stapled to our schedule for the week...which I also print out weekly. Ours isn't as involved as yours. But, there you have it. :) ETA - Each of my 5 "older" children pick a request (or two) each day and we all take a turn praying.

Great question! We just started doing dictation yesterday and my son did this exact thing. Actually, I have no doubt I would do this as well if I was doing dictation, which I never did. (I do it when I'm reading without meaning to. :blush:)

Ha, ha!! That totally sounds like me...I'd be thinking...Do I need both of these...maybe. ;)

DP

It was just an inconvenient delay. The reasons haven't changed. You still want it. ;)

So awesome!!

We are doing Apologia Flying this year as most a read aloud. I'm sure we will do some of the experiments, but not nearly all of them. We just can't do a lot of hands on stuff. Last year what I did was just get lots of science library books and read them. It was fun and perfectly fine. My son learned a lot from those books. Oh, we also watched Magic School Bus DVD's once a week and then got books related to that topic. :)

Really cool site!! I love that I can play the episodes at home. I said DVD based, but I have my computer hooked up to my TV. We watch Hulu (for me and other channels for the kids) on our TV but through the computer. So, this would work great! Thank you for the recommendation!

My library has that too! I'm going to check it out. Thank you!!! Any other recommendations I should check out?