At a pace chosen and constantly readjusted by my DD: - Kumon fine motor skill workbooks - BOB books - Reading Eggs? We did the trial, she seemed to enjoy, then told me flat out not to subscribe. A week later, she changed her mind and wanted signed up. Still deciding if it is money well spent. - Critical Thinking Company workbooks - RightStart A - Moving Beyond the Page 5-7. We'll only do 1-2 concepts, but a lot of days we'd do all the above and she'd be asking for more, so this is to be her "more". With adjustments made due to lack of fine motor skills for writing and drawing. - still looking for a good science experiments book

How I knew DD (now 3yo) is gifted? I accepted that even if the developmental charts were not 50th percentile but much lower, I should not have to go to the 3yo charts to track my 12mo's milestones. Both DH and I are gifted and DD was outperforming the stories from our childhoods. Parents in the playroom at the library or science center would ask "how old is she" and when I answered would either be impressed or get very insecure about their own child, to the point I started being careful about answering. Just before her second birthday she became frustrated when I told her to "read" a book to herself because I was busy and insisted that I teach her to read. Gaps? I went to public K-12, started early, was in accelerated classes throughout. As I gear up for homeschooling long term, I am shocked by the huge and glaring gaps in my knowledge. Finding the right level? I think after having to abandon multiple false starts, I finally have a good set up. For my 3 year old. I can only imagine the number of failures I will have in my future in tracking how fast, how far, how deep. Thank heavens I have a sense of humor :)

We put money aside from each paycheck to cover curriculum, memberships at the zoo and science museum, swim lessons, and some extra for the various educational toys and projects we throw in throughout the year. Right now, this is totaling $60 every two weeks.

Level 2: Fun in the Sun Up, Pup Pip and Pog Bow-wow! The Big Hat Sox the Fox OK, Kids Rub-a-Dub Go, Bus The Red Hen The Sad Cat 0 to 10 There is a new Rhyming Words set that goes great in between levels 1 and 2. And I'd suggest doing the Kindergarten Sight Words set between levels 2 and 3.

The top 5 things that I love most for my just-turned-3-year-old are: - a dry erase board and washable markers - an art station with the "safe" stuff in easy reach (paper, glue stick, tape, collage materials, markers, colored pencils, crayons, stickers) and the supervision required stuff out of reach. I realize what is safe is very dependent on the child in question. - a pile of colored tiles for sorting and counting - a stack of library books - Duplo The top five things this child loves for herself: - the art station listed above - a big bin of fabric of lots of different sizes, colors, patterns, and textures. This is used for all manner of creative play. You would not believe all the things those fabrics are used for. - play kitchen - sandbox (in a fenced backyard I will now let her go out to on her own). This would make my top five if she weren't so talented in turning herself into a sand-covered monster. - my iPad

My daughter is currently too young to go further than the backyard on her own. We are in a moderately homeschool-friendly area and I frequently see school-age children on their own during the daytime, especially at the library. It is common enough around here and no one seems to so much as blink. There are also a handful of private schools in town that don't quite match up with the public school calendar, so those kids are also out and about during the school day sometimes.

Another person here to say that you can tweak the schedules to your life and child. My suggestion would be to do the three Rs and also a science curric since your son likes science. Or subscribe to a year of Magic School Bus kits and let that be his fun science curric for the year. It is not really necessary to match up the science and history years. Use either K level or first grade level materials, whatever fits where your son is at - and remember it can be different grade levels for different subjects. You've been teaching your child and that is NOT a bad thing! Finding a style that suits you and your family sometimes means trying things that don't work so well. They're learning experiences, not mistakes :)

Both Reading Eggs and abcmouse offer free trials. I just did both with my three year old. For her, abcmouse just didn't hold her interest at all. Reading Eggs was better, but her mousing skills are such that I had to do any timed levels for her because it would "fail" her after she had laboriously completed the level without mistakes. So we ended up dropping that one, too, but I will definitely reconsider it after she can use a mouse easily.

I tried Peak With Books and was really disappointed. The activities in it were very much geared for classrooms and sometimes difficult or impossible to scale down for home. I thought the reading comprehension questions in it were simple enough that I could do as well or better on my own - and that's saying something since I bought it because I was afraid I wasn't doing that part well enough. I find that if I look at each page of a story and simply remember "who, what, when, where, why, how" then I can come up with good questions for my daughter. Peak With Books is actually in a box right now waiting for me to drive it to a book donation center, right along with 100 EZ Lessons, which was the other major bust we had. I suppose if you want to try it, I could dig it out and send it to you for the cost of shipping. I finally just skipped DD ahead to a Moving Beyond the Page 5-7 concept and that seems to be a much better level for her for comprehension. No idea if their new level for 4-5 year olds covers reading comprehension.

I am organized. DH is not. Since I like the bills to be paid, I do it. I also make the budget and generally decide what is being saved for, though there is certainly some input from DH on this part. I'm fine with this arrangement. We finally hit a point where we have the budget to have an "allowance" each, so there shouldn't really be much more of the "can we afford X" conversations, either.

I love our color laser. Love it. I don't actually do much printing, but after having printed a bunch of Confessions of a Homeschooler stuff on it, I'm so grateful for its cost effectiveness. We sprang for one of the all-in-ones that is wireless and has duplexing. I especially love duplexing.

I'm a planner by nature, so I'm actively having to resist planning. DD is quite young and this is only a pre-K year for us, so it's easier to convince myself to relax. But I'm also not really "wanting" to plan K either as I would like to make sure that I don't get into a mode of box-checking with a young child. Not saying that's what everyone does when they lesson plan, it's just what I know I would fall into. My current system is to have a regular small day planner. If there are particular projects I want to do that week, I write them on a post-it and stick it in the day planner. As we finish things, I write them down on the day we finish them. So yesterday was blank when the day started, but at the end of the day we had done a page of a Critical Thinking Company workbook, practiced cutting and tracing, did a Reading Eggs lesson, learned about even/odd using colored tiles, and read abound roly polies and ants.

Have you looked at Noeo? It can be done in two days/week and has a number of experiments. A bit pricey, but you can cut costs by either buying the complete kit or borrowing some of the books from the library.

Teach to what she wants. Absolutely, do kindergarten. Slow down when she is frustrated and speed up when she is eager. I am doing a combination of pre-k and K with my 3 year old ow and she is loving it. Don't think so much in age terms, just meet each child where he or she is at!

Congratulations!!! We only made it to lesson 12 before jumping ship. We do a high-five-and-cuddles celebration at the end of every set of Bob books we read, though!

I say go for it, though my daughter is younger so I'm speaking only from experience with working out-of-level and not with MCT. There seem to be many people who use MCT early on the Accelerated Learner board, so you could try asking there for experiences with this.

There are apps for almost every Zynga game for iPad. In addition, you can download the Photon web browser for $5 and it will run Flash sites on the iPad. I love mine and once I discovered Photon, I now use it for everything!

For beginner snakes, I recommend corn snakes or king snakes. Both stay fairly small and generally can be conditioned to regular handling. I'm another vote for bearded dragons. I would try to find an adult to adopt so you don't have to mess with finding tiny crickets and the need to change cage sizes for a baby. I will say that the initial setup can be pricey. A lot of information says that a 55 gallon tank is sufficient, but I really disagree. I rescued two previously, and the female went into a 55 gallon tank and the male into a custom 4x2x2 cage - it's what I had on hand at the time. We thought the female was kinda lifeless while the male showed a ton of personality. I got curious and swapped the living spaces, and the lizards swapped personalities. Having more room to run around seemed to do wonders for bringing out their personalities.

Having sold on eBay, I haven't found this to be true. There have been many times I've been selling identical or near identical items, such as when I sold my cloth diaper stash in sets of four diapers but listed several sets that all ended within an hour or two. The ones that had early bids tended to go for much lower overall prices. My theory is that the people watching and sniping paid more attention to the items that still looked low near the end and only bid on those ones in the last few minutes, ignoring the ones that had a higher price with 10 minutes to go. The snipers would then be cross-bidding and that price would end up considerably higher at the end. As a seller, my absolute ideal is to have one bidder early, but still at the minimum bid with a couple hours to go. That means I know early that it is guaranteed to sell, but I'll likely end up with a higher price if the bidding all happens in the last hour.

I have a daughter who is 3. Here's what we're planning: I ordered one unit of Moving Beyond the Page 5-7. It should be here next week. If it works for us, that will be a general language arts/social studies/science curriculum. Reading: continue Bob books, then graduate to easy readers. If we get stuck somewhere, I'll take another look at phonics programs. Math: RightStart Math Logic: workbooks from Critical Thinking Company. Fine motor: Kumon fine motor workbooks until she shows more interest and ability for handwriting. Then probably Zaner-Bloser. Art: she does self-directed art daily. Will add in ideas from Preschool Art. Swimming classes, open gymnastics classes, and a "discovery time" at the local children's science museum I look at all that and it seems like so much. But it's just what we've been doing (except the MBtP) and it averages about 25 minutes a day.

Noeo Science does three year rotations of Biology, Chemistry, and Physics.

Has anyone used these? We have a ton of art supplies on hand for my pre-k daughter, but we don't do much in the way of crafts or art "projects" and I know I'm far more likely to get things done if they come prepackaged for me. The price seems a little steep, though, and I can't find many reviews. I'd love to hear others' experiences with these!

We chose RightStart for DD specifically because it uses so little writing. It teaches using manipulatives and games and focuses primarily on mental math.

My DD loves the Kumon fine motor skill workbooks and requests her "activity sheets" every day. They have a series for age 2+, the titles are Let's Color, Let's Sticker and Paste, Let's Cut Paper, and Let's Fold. They move in a progression throughout each workbook, starting vey simple and becoming more and more complex. They have their regular fine motor skill workbook series for ages 3+, starting with the Traing workbook. The books are available at Barnes and Noble (so you can see them first) or a bit cheaper at Amazon. We also just keep art supplies within reach at all times - crayons, colored pencils, markers, scissors, tape, stickers, paper, and so on. She creates freely.

I've gone ahead and ordered the Environment concept. We'll see how it goes. My library carries all but one of the books so I was able to keep the cost reasonable, too. I really wish the 4-5 level had been out about a year ago! We tried a couple more traditional "preschool" things when DD announced she wanted to learn to read and learn "big numbers" and they were really poor fits for her. I ended up cobbling things together over the last year from a variety of sources. The sample of this looks like it would have been fantastic for us then.