Although I've not tried it yet, I'm intrigued by the book Moebius Noodles: Adventurous Math for the Playground Crowd. The info about it says, "Learn how you can create an immersive rich math environment for your baby. Find out ways to help your toddler discover deep math in everyday experiences." It looks like it's aimed at a younger crowd (under 7?), but you can apparently preview the entire pdf of the book for free on the website.

I'm doing level 1 with my 2nd grader (we started it partway through last year), and I'm really liking it. We're doing something else for literature, so we usually don't do the readings on the assigned days. Instead, we listen to the Librivox recordings ahead of time when we have time (like during long car trips, or during vacation when DS wants to listen to a read aloud while he plays). But we do the copywork, grammar, poetry and listen to the fable each day. I really like that it's quick and easy, and that it's covering things that I somehow never get around to teaching (like the months of the year in order), plus a gentle introduction to things like punctuation. I'm also enjoying the poetry - most days we just read it once and move on. But when there's a poem that one of us particularly likes, we'll read it another time or two, and maybe discuss it. No pressure, just exposure, which is perfect for us.

It works okay. It has be laying down to use it (I've seen videos where people use an abacus upright and the beads stay where they put them, either up or down - this one doesn't do that). And if you jostle it, the beads will move. But that also means it's easy to move the beads to do calculations, and quick and easy to reset. My big problem with my homemade abacus was that the beads were too stiff, and didn't slide easily, so I actually prefer this. I imagine there's a happy medium out there where the beads slide easily but also stay put, but I also guess that it's significantly more expensive! :)

About a year ago I made a Soroban abacus and bought this book for my son. For whatever reason, he was completely uninterested, so I put it away on the shelf. Last week we talked about the invention of the abacus, and how they're used, by reading a section in the Childcraft Mathemagic book. For a demonstration, I looked up some YouTube videos of kids doing amazingly fast calculations using the abacus. DS was enthralled! He thought that looked like a really cool thing to learn. I quickly realized my homemade abacus wouldn't do, so I bought this one off of Amazon. The book is okay. It's aimed at kids just learning math, so there's lots of practice counting and writing numbers, which my 7 year old doesn't need. So we were able to go through 41 pages in the first day, which covered the numbers 1-9, and adding up numbers with sums less than 5. (There are 109 pages in the book, and it covers numbers up to 100, addition with sums up to 18, and subtraction within the range of 18.) Despite the basic nature of the book, there are a few things I quite like: it has practice visualizing the abacus and doing sums with just an imagined abacus, right from the beginning. (This is one of the neat things about advanced users of the abacus, IMO- they can do calculations with huge numbers in their heads, by picturing the process on an imaginary abacus.) It also teaches the proper finger technique for moving the beads. One thing I was less than impressed with was it's explanation of the "why" behind the method for adding. For instance, when you're adding 2 + 4, it tells you that "1 is the little friend of 4," so to add 4 when you don't have enough beads, you move the heaven (top bead that's worth 5) up (which is really down), and then move 1 bead down. It took me a little bit of looking at this to figure out that what they were doing was adding 5 and subtracting 1, which is the same as adding 4. (Clear as mud? Sorry, this is hard to explain without a visual!) This was never explained, the kids are just supposed to take on faith that "4 is the little friend of 1", and so this is the method you use to add when there aren't enough beads. But I don't want to just memorize algorithms, I want to know why! Also, some of the English in the book is a little interesting, but nothing too awful. Overall, I'm glad we have this book. It's serving as a nice introduction to the Soroban abacus, but it's not fantastic, so I'm interested to hear if anyone else has a suggestion for something better.

I've been using a planner from A Plan in Place this year, and I've been very happy with it. It's customizeable, so you can have the boxes and labels that you want (which is huge for me), and the dates are not pre-filled in. However, it is just black and white, and so not particularly "pretty." But I'm sure with some washi tape and stickers, you could make just about any planner as spiffy as you wanted/needed it to be. :) (Great, now I have a sudden desire to pretty up my planner!)

Books this size are just made for ereaders. (And I love Sanderson!) Thank you!

I'm sure others will post with the usual disclaimers about kindergarten being very young, science should be about them enjoying it, and keeping the interest alive, etc. (Which I agree with and love, I'm just not very good at explaining it. :)) However, I also wanted to mention that she might enjoy the latest offering from Kathy Jo (a poster here, and author of English Lessons Through Literature, and Reading Lessons Through Literature). Her husband is writing a series of living science books, for pretty much the reasons you gave - libraries are often lacking in good living books on topics like physics and chemistry, particularly for the younger years. She just published the first one, on botany, which you can check out here. I can't remember if there are demonstrations included, but if you were interested and wanted to ask questions, there's a Yahoo group that is pretty active, and Kathy Jo answers lots of questions there.

My DS sounds similar in terms of age and reading level. Two suggestions: The Growly Books (I believe I originally saw it on this board, and it was specifically mentioned as being for kids whose reading level was higher than their maturity level) My Life As A Book (The cover review calls it a kinder, gentler Wimpy Kids, with all the fun and more plot. I know it took DS significantly longer to read than any of the Wimpy Kid books. It also appears to have cute illustrations in the margins to illustrate tricky vocabulary words that appear in the text.) Dick King-Smith books (DS repeatedly checks these out from the library to reread.) (Just a note about the Fudge books: Super Fudge makes reference to Santa not being real. That bit required some quick on the fly editing when DH read it aloud to DS last year!)

:grouphug: I'm pretty happy with our math program (Math on the Level: "here's a couple of ways to teach this concept, do what works for you and your kid"), but I very briefly dabbled in c-rods last year. I had pretty much the same reaction you did. My son already had a really great intuitive number sense (he could do some mental arithmetic faster than I can, and understood negative numbers from playing card games), but I, too, was lured in by the great and wonderful claims made about the manipulatives approach. We spent a week dabbling with them, but it just felt like moving backwards. He could already do the math, why waste all this time learning this (arbitrary) system of colors? We petered out by the end of the week, the rods went back into the closet, and I haven't looked back. I just wanted you to know that you're not alone in feeling that way towards the rods! On a practical note, can you return the books, sell the manipulatives "used" online, and use the money to buy the first level of Singapore (if that's what you think will really work for you)? Yeah, the program has to work for your child, but it also has to work for you, or he will definitely pick up on your dislike/frustration. Good luck!

I did! I got the teacher/mom planner, not the student one. We're just finishing up our first week, and we're only doing a couple of subjects, but so far I think I really like it! One thing to note is that the teacher ones are only one page per week, whereas the student ones can be one or two pages per week. The weeks are undated, so you can start whenever you want, and you won't have lots of blank pages for weeks you take off. The paper is not super thick (I'd say it's approximately the same weight as my usual printer paper), so writing with a fountain pen or makers would probably not work well. I'm usually writing in pencil, so that isn't an issue for me. I haven't used the extra planning pages (curriculum plans for upcoming years, budget, goals, etc.) much, because I had already done most of that planning in OneNote. The one aspect that I really like about it is that I was able to make weekly checklists for things we do every day, so I don't need to write them out over and over again. (For example I have check boxes for DS's 5-a-days for Math on the Level, listening to this term's composer, and piano practice.) I also have a spot to note extra activities we did this week, and place to remind myself of any prep work I need to do for next week. The customizability is what really sold me on this one- apparently I'm super picky about what I want in a planner. :) Oh, and also the folders! I ordered mine with two folders, and in them I keep my planning sheets for all of our subjects, so I have it all together when I sit down to plan each upcoming week. One thing I did when ordering- I paid the extra dollar to get a proof sent to me, and then printed it out (it's watermarked, but worked for my purposes). Then I scheduled out a pretend typical week, to check that I liked the layout, there was enough room for everything, etc. That was really helpful for me. Sorry to have written a book. Apparently I do like it :)

I got the first grade level for my 7 year old part way through last year, and it made art so easy. I love that it includes a pdf that tells you what each project is, and what supplies are needed. But best of all, I was surprised by how much my son liked this. He's not into crafts: he likes drawing, but not coloring or anything artsy crafty. But after each of the first four lessons, the next day he asked to do the project again. I call that pretty high praise!

I just ordered the teacher planner from A Plan In Place. The basic version is $20, but I took advantage of being able to customize it, so mine was a little more. I'm very excited about!

We've used two of the kits from Home Science Adventures (magnetism and we're partway through astronomy) and they've both been great! Everything you need is included in the kits, and there's a variety of interesting experiments. My favorite astronomy activity so far has been one where you use little flags to mark in your yard (or a field) the relative distances of different planets from the sun. All the pictures you see labeling the planets have them so close together (so you can see them all), that it was really eye-opening to see how far apart they really are. I highly recommend them!

This is exactly why I gave up on BFSU, despite loving it in theory. (Well, it being a pain to put together each week didn't help, either!) I have only on kid, and I just couldn't get him engaged in the material, and asking questions and participating like it seems to require. Maybe it works better with groups of kids that can play off one another? I just ended up lecturing, which was awful for both of us. After we quit BFSU, I moved on to some Home Science Adventures kits, and he loved working on them. So science went from being dreaded to being the first thing he asked to do each week. And since I keep reading things that say that at this age, the important thing is to keep them interested in science, not necessarily to learn a specific set of facts, Nebel is collecting dust. I still love the idea of BFSU, so I'm following this thread, hoping someone has some magical advice, but I'm just not sure we'll ever get it to work for us.

We love it, too! I used it all year with DS7, and I really love the self-paced aspect of it. DS is a very "mathy" kid, but he hates to write, so it has worked really well for us. I had such issues with the spreadsheet, so I ended up using an index card system, which I actually prefer. It's great to see other fans. :)

We have a lot of board games, and I got sick of the organizational nightmare all those boxes are. So I took out all the pieces and put them in plastic drawers, and just keep the game boards in a basket. (It's hard to explain, but you can see the post I got the idea from here:http://www.raisinglemons.com/parenting/game-closet-organization/). It keeps the games organized, easy to find, and makes it super easy to put away lost pieces.

My DS is 7.5, and an only. (We were at the park once, and I overheard some kids ask if he had any siblings. He said no, but he does have two dogs. That's about right. :)) I have to say, I love having only one kid! When we get together with other families, I'm free to sit and chat with the other moms, and don't have to be constantly attending a little one, of chasing after a toddler. Or we go to the park, and he runs off to play, and I can sit and read my book in peace. Especially now that he's older, and able to go play by himself without needing me to keep such a close eye on him. I'm lucky that we're both introverts, and that we live in an area that seems to have a fair number of homeschooling families and activities. Actually, I've had to work to make sure we don't over-schedule ourselves, and that we have at least a couple of "free" days each week. It's so easy to say yes to everything, because I know he'd enjoy this or that activity. But I've learned that if we don't have some days to just hang around the house, we both suffer. (I can only imagine what a wreck he'd be if he had to be around all those other kids 8 hours a day, five days a week!) One challenge I've found is that I feel obligated to entertain him during the day, and like I have to play with him every time he wants to play a game. But I'm working on remembering that boredom is good for kids :) and that entertaining himself is an important life skill! I also often feel like the house is "too quiet." But turning on the radio takes care of that pretty easily. And Pandora is a lot cheaper than more kids. :) We chose to homeschool for academic reasons: he definitely benefits from being able to move more quickly through curriculum than you could in a school. But more and more I'm seeing/realizing the social benefits, too. Basically, I love homeschooling an only because it gives us introverts quiet time at home when we need it (he's been off happily building with Legos all morning), and it's pretty easy to find others to hang out with when we want the company.

My seven year old is really enjoying our first Home Science Adventure kit (http://www.homeschoolscience.com). We're doing magnets, but they have several others. I love having everything we need already in the box!

If you have an iPhone, this app put out by the Cornell lab of ornithology helps you identify birds, by asking a couple of basic questions about it. I just stumbled across it recently, so I haven't tried it yet, but it looks pretty cool.

There is some discussion of projects and hands on activities in the very interesting book "Why Don't Students Like School," which is by a cognitive scientist. Basically he said you had to be careful what an activity is really causing a student to think about. The example given was that if you have kids make biscuits when studying the underground railroad, they'll spend a couple of minutes thinking about the underground railroad, and then all the rest of the time thinking about baking - measuring, mixing, etc. Which is fine if you want to include some math in their lesson, but if you really want them to be thinking about history, it's wasted time. I think this is important to think about in any project a kid is doing: how much time is spent thinking about the subject at hand, and how much is spent on the "extra" - cutting, pasting, figuring out how Power Point works, etc.

Not a book for kids, but one I've been wanting to read forever is Parenting Beyond Belief: On Raising Ethical, Caring Kids Without Religion. This might be helpful to you? In particular, one reviewer said "I also liked the reference guides to finding good books for children about religions without teaching them that one is right and the rest are wrong."

We haven't quite gotten there yet, but I've got this video bookmarked for fun skip counting songs up to 9's: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wh7dn_xc13Y&noredirect=1 ETA: I'm also thinking of trying out Math Bands.

While scrolling through a costume website, DS, using some crazy 6-year-old intuition, pointed at The Flash and asked "What can he do?" After a quick Google check (geek fail, I know), I told him he runs really fast. Considering that one of DS's favorite past times is running around having people time him to see how fast he's going, he declared this perfect. The whole process took maybe five minutes, and The Flash was the only costume he asked about. I'll take it!

Another vote for Scrambled States of America. Great for teaching state names, locations (and, incidentally, shapes), but weaker on capitals (they're used, just not as much). And I'm bookmarking Wakko's America, because the Animaniacs are fantastic. :)

I used a Victorinox sling bag like this one for the past ten years, including when DS was a baby. It fit my wallet, keys, and phone in the front pocket, and his diaper, snack, and whatever other odds and ends he needed in the larger back pocket. It worked beautifully. Unfortunately, the zipper broke this year (and it's looking a little sad after ten years of abuse), so I've been debating for months about what to get next. I have a bag fetish (I love checking them all out, and looking through all those pockets!), although I tend to just carry the same one forever once I find one I like. But I'm particular, so it takes a while... Right now I am seriously considering asking for this Tom Bihn bag for Christmas. Roomy, easy to carry, specific separate bag for my knitting (bonus!)... I've also considered the (small) Overland Placer, the (medium) Overland Ellis, the (larger) Overland Donner, and the Patagonia Minimass.