I used the Kindergarten program this year (minus the math and phonics) and was very happy with it. It was easy to just purchase the pieces I needed from their website. I already owned math and phonics programs that I liked so I just subbed them in for those sections of Memoria's lesson plans. The lesson plans were very clear and easy to follow, so this was not hard to do. We especially loved the literature and enrichment activities. We discovered so many great books through their suggested read-alouds, and covered what I would consider to be a full science and social studies curriculum for the K set without ever needing to open a textbook! If you are a fan of Charlotte Mason (as I am) you will love their reading selections for this age group. Their stuff isn't cheap, but the lesson plans do include lists of all the recitation, copywork, read-alouds, supplemental books, music, picture-study art, etc. that you will need. To save money, I used these lists and found most of the books at the library, wrote out the copywork assignments myself, and gathered the music selections from YouTube. I did buy the art cards, but they were pretty small and in the future I will find larger color copies in art books or print larger images from online. I have a K student and a Pk-4 student and both did the literature and enrichment activities together. I would highly recommend this program based on our overall experience. Good luck!

I have both, and after reading through them and comparing side-by-side it looks to me like the basic method and even most of the phonograms are almost exactly the same. The spelling list/order is different, but it looks like you do eventually end up teaching most of the same words (although I haven't gone through all the spelling lists side-by-side). Pick whichever one makes the most sense to you, but I don't think you can go wrong either way. I was all set to do Spalding b/c I fell in love with the method and philosophy, but I was having a hard time wrapping my head around how to tie it all together. I was tempted by LOE, but the price tag was a deterrent, plus it just didn't feel as "complete" to me. I could be wrong though b/c I haven't actually seen the whole thing. Then I saw SWR+Wise Guide for $5.00 at a used curric. sale and picked it up b/c I thought it might help me understand Spalding better. It did. I found the SWR manual better organized than the 6th ed. Spalding that I have, although it is still far from the most organized thing I have ever read. But I like the Wise Guide so much that now I think I'm going to use SWR instead of Spalding. I like the enrichment activites and the way it's laid out. I also prefer some of her markings to Spalding, though that's just my personal preference. It looks (to me) like you could use either way with either list to accomplish the same thing. The SWR manual also comes with a sample lesson plan guide in the back which was really helpful for me being able to see the big picture and how all the pieces are supposed to fit together. As I said before, though, SWR and Spalding seem to be very, very similar. There are people who have written "quick start" guides and posted youtube videos for teaching both. Maybe you could look at some of those to help you decide.

I'm loving the sound of this for my K and Pre-K kids! I think we would be particualrly interested in the science stuff too. Do the FIAR books include instructions for doing related experiments/projects, or do you have to seek out a lot of supplemental science books and/or flesh out the projects on your own? What do you plan to do after FIAR, since it is geared toward 5-8 year olds? Is there another unit studies curriculum that goes through upper elementary or beyond? Will you just put together your own unit studies after that, or switch to more traditional curricula? I like the idea of doing unit studies all the way through, but I don't know if I'm creative enough to put it all together on my own.

We plan to homeschool all the way through (for many of the reasons already mentioned here), so starting with K is the logical choice. However, even if I did plan to send my kids to traditional schools, I wouldn't do it for K. Here, K is 7 hrs per day/5 days a week. I think that is just way too much time away from home for such a young child.

Thanks everyone! I'm off to place my order!

My kids love Little Bear too. I didn't know there was a show! Where?! Some of the Dr. Seuss are really easy too - Green Eggs and Ham and Hop on Pop are two good ones.

I am in the same boat as you, and it sounds like my daughter is at about the same skill level as your son. I have mainly been focusing on researching different reading curricula, since learning to read will be our first priority. I've finally settled on LoE Foundations as a starting point b/c it is supposed to address all the different learning styles. It also has a lot of games for reinforcement and looks like it will be fun for such a young learner. Hopefully after using this for a while I will have a better idea of how she learns and what she enjoys, b/c it looks like it has a little bit of everything in it. For math, I know that I want to use something that is very manipulative-based, since children this age are so concrete. There are lots of curriculum choices that rely on manipulatives, and w/o knowing her learning style yet I really don't know which one might work best. I think I'm going to start with Miquon and cuisenaire rods b/c I like the philosophy behind it and because it's not crazy expensive, so if it doesn't work I haven't wasted lots of $$. As far as the other stuff goes, I went online and found the performance/common core standards for my state public school system just to get a general idea of scope and sequence for the different K-1st grade subjects. I am going to use the library and suggestions from this forum and homeschooling books to fill in with books and activities that I think would be appropriate. For science, I see us doing lots of hands-on experiments, cooking, nature study, etc. For social studies, I want to read lots of stories about people in different times and places and start a timeline and a wall map to keep track of the when and where we encounter in all our subjects. We will do homeschool classes for art, music, and gymnastics once a week. I think this will probably be enough for us for the K-1 level. I have no idea what I plan to do as she gets older. I guess I will look at what's working/not working after this year and go from there. It IS very overwhelming getting started, but also very exciting! Good luck to you!

Thanks for all the suggestions! I've been looking at the app, but we'd have to use it on my phone. I'm not sure if that would be too small. Has anyone tried it on the iphone screen?

I'm excited about using LOE Foundations for my 5yo. The only thing I'm not crazy about is the price if I end up needing to buy levels A-D and then Essentials. So, how many extras do I really need to buy beyond the teacher's manual and workbook? I want to do the games, but those cards aren't cheap. Would I be able to make my own sets from the information given in the manual? I also see that Doodling Dragons is referenced in some of the sample lessons. Is this book really helpful for cementing the basic phonograms, or are the flashcards enough? The website says the workbook is essential, but is it really? We will use the whiteboard for all of the writing until she has better small motor control. It seems like most of those workbook pages would just be wasted. Thanks to everyone who has already posted about using Foundations on these forums. Your comments were really helpful in making my decision to go with this curriculum.

Had this problem several years back - my sympathies! Make sure they do a culture if you have more uti symptoms. Sometimes I have symptoms w/o having a full-blown infection, and a few days of as much water/cranberry juice as I can handle will clear things up. The culture will also make sure that whatever you have growing in there will respond to the antibiotic you're on. I was once switched to a different drug b/c the culture showed that the bacteria in my bladder was resistant to the drug the doctor had originally prescribed. I find that it also helps to cut out anything that could irritate your bladder for several months after a long stretch of utis. I stay away from caffeine, alcohol, carbonated beverages, citrus juices, etc. and only drink water as much as possible. This seems to help things settle down a little.