My son just finished a comprehensive neuropsych eval, including the WISC-V and Woodcock-Johnson Acheivement test. We got an 18 page report with some tables of results from the different tests, some interpretative paragraphs that included some results of subtests not included in the tables, and then some interpretation comparing the results from the different tests and giving qualitative descriptions of various screens for things like ADHD and depression and whatnot. I think the table included all the tested sub tests of the WISC, but it definitely did not include all the details of the W-J. Is this the normal way of reporting them? I would have thought I would get the score reports from the different tests in their entirety, with the interpretative report attached. Here if I need the scores from one or the other, I don’t have a 1-2 page test score I can use - I either have an 18 page report with way more information than anyone would need (unless I was enrolling him in school and we were talking about an IEP or something), or I guess I can redact 16 pages worth of information? I asked for, and received, a printout of the W-J score page, but it only has his initials on it apparently because of HIPPA concerns, and I am now being told they have given me all the information they can/will. I just want the test scores in an easy-to-use format for my purposes of being in compliance with the testing law in my state (I have to send in the results), and qualification for gifted enrichment programs. Does this seem like too much to ask? I’d appreciate any insight into what is normal before I call them back.

I'm facing this same conundrum for next year. I've used ELTL 1&2 with my oldest (8yo, will be a 3rd grader next year), and now my second child is starting 1st next year. Thus far, we have done all the literature as family read alouds (I also have a 3.5yo who loves to listen in, and a 1yo who does not), and then I do the book stuff 1:1 with my oldest. I considered multiple options, including getting separate grammar programs, picking my own lit, separate copywork, dictation (for the older), writing (for the older - ELTL3 introduces the progym), etc. etc., but when I had all these books lined up and went through them, I just really like ELTL better. I think it's a great program, and I really like ELTL3 after comparing it directly to FLL3, IEW writing, and CAP's Writing and Rhetoric program. I also love how ELTL1 is structured and includes Aesop and all of that, and I really love the copywork coming from their literature. So, my plan for next year is to do Level 3 (C, now that it's renamed) as written with my oldest and read those books aloud as our family readalouds, and follow the sequence in there for our picture study. For my 1st grader, I'm going to do ELTL1, and revisit about 2/3 of the literature mostly as audio books/stories in the car. I decided that it would be great if my kids did Beatrix Potter (read paper books), Kipling (audio), The Velveteen Rabbit (read paper book), and maybe (depending on time) Pinocchio every other year for their elementary years. I'm skipping Five Children and It and Five Little Peppers. I am going to get the Memoria Press copywork book to pull out during the lessons when we are not reading the book, but still do the Aesop and poetry with him. Take this with a grain of salt, since I haven't actually executed this plan yet, but I think it will be a pretty solid way of integrating ELTL1. Not sure what I will do the year following, but at that point I may spin off my 4th grader to read the literature independently or something. Looking forward to hearing other ideas. We really love our family readalouds, and I don't want to give that up. (PS My signature is really old. I need to figure out how to change it, but my kids are 8, 6, 3.5, and 1.)

It sounds like you might in Virginia with me. I can't quite tell from your post which it is, but if she is turning 6 in September 2017, she does not have to test for the 2016-2017 academic year. If she already turned 6 in September 2016, then she does have to test for the 2016-2017 academic year. You have to test for the academic year in which the student was 6 or older on September 30th. September 30th, 2017 pertains to the 2017-2018 academic year, not the 2016-2017 year. If it was legal to delay kindergarten this past year, you don't need to test until next year.

We use that for our emergency and intermediate savings accounts. Have had no issues, very easy to do online and transfer money to/from our main checking account when needed.

I approach this topic as parenting, not really homeschooling. Ron Lieber has a new book out on the topic, which I thought was a good overview. We start an allowance at age 5 (1 quarter per year of life, so $1.50 for my 6yo), and let them open a bank account, start teaching about earning vs paying interest, and other related topics. We discuss things like charitable giving, taxes, insurance, college and retirement funds, making choices that are in our budget, regularly as they come up in real life. During Lent we work extra hard at making the connection between our material sacrifices and being able to give money to those in need. My dad was very deliberate with us when we were kids- showing us the electric bill, or the property tax bill, so that we were well-equipped for adulthood. It's a gradual process that builds on itself. Kids need to be told even something as simple as "Daddy gets paid for the work he does at work, which is how we pay for our food, electricity, and summer camp." I'll verbalize the thought process of "I'd like to go out to dinner tonight, but I'd rather save that money and use it on vacation when we can get delicious crab cakes." So far, my kids seem interested and are following along. I find the Lego catalog to be extremely instructive on the value of a dollar!

We drive everywhere except to a friend's house in the neighborhood and the piano teacher, also in the neighborhood (about 1/3 mi). We live in a suburban subdivision, so when you leave our neighborhood, it's a two-lane road without shoulders, bike lanes, or sidewalks with big ditches on the side. The nearest non-house thing we could walk to is a gas station, Subway, and CVS about 1.5mi away, but there's no point in walking to the gas station, we don't frequent Subway, and I think I go to CVS about three times a year. Plus, it's still the no sidewalk/no shoulder thing. We consider that we live close to a lot of things - our YMCA is about a 7min drive (about 2.5mi, I think); our church is a 15 min drive; my husband drives about 15-20 min to work; the library is a 10min drive. But there is nothing in walking distance to which we would walk, which was the case where I grew up and in an awful lot of places as well. It's all about where you live. Oh, and the nearest bus stop is near the gas station, so about 1.5mi away, and would be so ludicrously more time consuming than driving that I've never even considered it.

We moved cross-country and I became a SAHM all at the same time when my kids were 4.5, 2.5, and 6wks old. We were contemplating homeschooling, but still considering other options, but we did not send anyone to preschool that year. We did a lot of community events - library groups, a military families group, etc. - but, without even intending to, most of the people we met were homeschoolers. Everyone else had their 4yos in 4-5d/wk preschool. Now that it's 2 years later, I'm realizing that even most of the "preschool" events are filled with 1 and 2 yos because everyone else is in preschool and a full summer of camp activities. We didn't look for or join a co-op until the following (K) year, but I can certainly understand the impulse in an area where intense preschool schedules are the norm. I will say that meeting so many homeschoolers really solidified our decision to pursue homeschooling - it made it seem really possible.

I'm not sure how old your son is, but we had the same problem when my son was 4.5-5 and a little older than 5. I put the book away for about 3 or 4 months, and picked back up when he officially started kindergarten at 5y8m. Then he took off flying and went from blending CVCC words to reading chapter books in about 6 weeks. We finished OPGTTR and, while he never loved the book, he was motivated to work through it and it was fast and effective. In our case, I think his reluctance was that he just wasn't as ready the first time we tried. Another program with more bells and whistles may have masked that, but I think he would have been in the same place at age 6.

Count us in with families who expect our children to get a 4yr college degree as a minimum. It's the norm in our social circles. If they didn't, they'd be the first people in their family going back several generations, and the vast majority of their family members have advanced degrees. I'm hard pressed to think of anyone I know socially without a bachelor's degree. Right or wrong, college is seen as both a rite of passage and a necessary next step towards a professional career. I don't think major is very important. My sister majored in English lit and is now an attorney; I majored in history and classics and am an MD; my brother barely graduated a very regional college with a degree in sociology and makes more than either of us working in business. He plans to get his MBA soon. I don't think it's a burden to intellectually-capable children to expect them to go to college and to support that endeavor financially as best you can, regardless of how clear their future direction may be. My oldest is only 6, but the kids have already toured my husband's alma mater twice to see his name on a plaque in some hallway, his favorite library carrel, the lake, etc. We were passing by Charlottesville recently and stopped for lunch and to walk around UVA, which is beautiful and historic, but the kids are also interested in student life and how they pick their classes, etc. - and the 4.5yo decided he wants to go to a smaller school with less walking :) College is just a normal idea for them, as it was for their parents, aunts, uncles, and most of their peer group. My 6yo was grumbling about screen time restrictions the other day- "first there's school, then college, then graduate school ..." They've heard a lot about my beloved grandfather, who shoveled coal for a living until he used the GI Bill to get his electrician's certificate, and then he sent all 5 of his kids to college (and 3 or 4 of them have graduate degrees). My dad paid that debt forward by sending us to college, and we'll do the same and send our kids. We think college is worth it on its own terms, for both the academic and the social experiences.

In the pre-529 days, my college was in an UTMA account, so it was legally mine once I turned 18. My dad was the trustee, and we kept his name on the accounts also, but I wrote the checks for tuition, room, board, etc. and a check to myself for a mutually-agreed upon spending allowance. It worked fine, and thanks to a booming stock market, I actually had a little left over at the end of 4 years that I used for grad school. We didn't qualify for any financial aid, so that wasn't an issue, and it actually benefitted my parents tax-wise since the capital gains were paid at my lower tax rate compared to theirs. Yes, I realize how amazingly fortunate I was. We're saving for our kids with 529 funds, so obviously will need to maintain control for tax reasons.

I thought we must be neighbors. (Chesapeake) The truancy laws around here are insane. It's actually the thing that pushed us over to committing to homeschool instead of PS, since the assistant principal at our zoned school told me that his dad's homecoming from deployment day would be an unexcused absence. On a practical level, we would have been in truancy court by mid-October. On a philosophical level, they do not own my children, thank-you-very-much, and I object to the idea that they are the best judge of where my six-year-old should be on any given day.

This is where I'm so happy that I (humanities-loving as I am) married an engineer. On one of our first dates, he explained the difference between jet and internal combustion engines to me (I had them sort of reversed in my head), and I was hooked. It does lend itself nicely to some math-y dinner table conversations, last night about estimating the cost of the new tile going into our kitchen - which covered estimation, percents, area, square feet, sales tax, and whether or not a forklift could make it up our driveway. It's not a podcast or hand-holding or anything, but we enjoy the Bedtime Math apps/books/daily emails as a nice reminder (to me) of how to discuss and naturally point out math-y stuff everywhere. I also like the resources put out my the Natural Math people - Moebius Noodles, their Multiplication Explorers course, and they have a new book for littler kids about classification. Some of them I use as lessons, but a lot of it I use to give myself the background and vocabulary to talk about it better. You already have a lot more mathematical thinking than you are aware of - things like symmetry, geometric shapes, classification, analogies, fractions, graphing. It helps me to use the above resources to tap into what I already know. I'm definitely leaving differential calculus for my husband!

This kid (6yo, kindergartener right now) is currently sitting on his bed reading some Children's Encyclopedia that was lying around, complete with sticky tabs marking the pages that he's cross-referencing with other pages and explaining to his 4yo brother why he prefers "BC" to "BCE." I think he'd enjoy having an encyclopedia of ancient history around.

We're starting SOTW Vol 1 in the fall with my first-grader. The Activity Guide references 4 encyclopedias, and I only want to purchase one. I don't have any ability to look through them before buying, so which would you recommend (or not recommend), and why? We are old-earth people, so happy to learn about prehistoric peoples.

We started MM1A with my 5.5yo kindergartener and it's been going well. He had done the K Mathematical Reasoning last year very easily (Critical Thinking Co, mentioned above). He needs me there for the reading (we started when he was not quite fluent), and because he's not really independent at anything at this age. He's on track to finish 1B about 4-6 wks before the end of our official school year, and then I think we'll just work on math facts, review, and math games. I think. What we like - straightforward, easy to use for both of us, a good amount of practice. He does all the problems since he's still learning math facts. How we do it - I aim for an average of 2 pages per day (4 days a week). One of those pages is from the core chapters - addition, subtraction, place value, etc. - and the other is from the "fun" chapters - coins, measuring, time, shapes. We will also sometimes mix it up and do only some of the problems on a page (the really busy pages will have 2-3 discrete "blocks" of problems) and do the same across several pages. Same amount of work, but I think it helps mix it up a little. So far it's working well, and has been just fine for my kindergartener, although not independent.

Thanks for all your thoughts. Sweetpea3829 and Coco_Clark do you mind sharing any of your reasons for not wanting your kids to get too far ahead? It seems like the students' maturity and attention span might not keep up with their math skills? And the resources written for older students wouldn't be a good fit for the younger? I'm sure it seems obvious to those of you who have been doing this longer. I like Sweetpea3829's plan in the 3-ish-grade and above. It seems like for my kindergartener/1st grader, there aren't quite as many different options for going broad and deep instead of just fast. It seems like once you start hitting multiplication that improves. I think we will keep going slowly with our 10-15 min/d over the summer. Accounting for planned trips and two weeks at camp, and a whole week off in June and in August, it's only going to be about six weeks, and I know we won't be working every day. So we'll take it as it comes. Thanks again!

It seems that it is recommended to continue some math over the summer, especially with drilling math facts. My 6yo in on track to finish Math Mammoth 1A&B by the end of our school year, without any trouble conceptually and working on memorizing math facts as we go. We've been doing about 15 minutes per day of math, and then some games and iPad apps for math drill intermittently. I'm wondering - if we're going to be spending 10-15 min/d working on math over the summer, why we wouldn't just continue to the next book, 2A compared to spending the whole summer on review. Accounting for camp, vacations, etc., I think we'd be moving a little more slowly than during the school year, but we'd still be moving forward. The first few chapters of MM2A look like mostly review anyway, so we could kill two birds with one stone there. My other thought is that we could continue fact drills while spending the summer doing more conceptual math - like the Moebius Noodles/Natural Math resources, which I like for this age, but I don't think these are mutually exclusive. Do people do this? Is there a reason not to just continue your math progression at a slower pace during summer break? We're not homeschooling year-round, per se, but are planning on continuing math and reading practice over the summer. Happy to hear any thoughts or experiences on this topic.

Elizabeth Foss has a bunch of American history unit studies like you describe - the Civil War one is here: http://ebeth.typepad.com/serendipity/2009/04/civil-war-studies.html

Big disclaimer: My kids are 6, 4, and 1.5 and we are half-way through kindergarten, so my thoughts are purely prospective. As above, we are brand new homeschoolers. When we started we said, "let's try kindergarten." Now, half-way through that, we decided that we can't see transitioning from HS to all-day school in the early elementary/learning to read years, so we'll reassess around 3rd-4th grade. When we get to that point, who knows? But we are planning to transition to school no later than grades 7-9, depending on the kid and our then schooling options. That's built in to our plan (which yes, may change), and not because of harder math, harder content, lab sciences, sports, expense or any of those in particular, but because we anticipate being able to find a high school that meets our goals (academic, extracurricular, and social). I had a great HS experience in a wonderful prep school with great teachers, small classes, supportive sports teams, and a wonderful community environment. We're hoping to find a similar environment for our kids because we think that the sum is greater than the parts in many such schools. We didn't think that the math worked out the same way for elementary school, where we want to leave more free time in the day, maintain more family-level flexibility for travel, and I didn't want to spend more time driving kids to school than I actually need to spend on all the teaching for kindergarten. But we're homeschooling as the best way to meet our goals - both for the child and the whole family - not as an end in and of itself. I often think that we are not really public school dropouts so much as private school dropouts. We looked, found the (well rated) public schools lacking, and then started looking at private schools before we realized that we can maintain more control, and save our $7k/yr and 75 min/d of driving. We will probably use a good chunk of the money we would have spent on K-8 private school and spend it instead on high school. Again, my kids are still so young that I really can't say what actual choices we'll make when we get there. (Plus, we're a military family, so I have no idea where we'll actually be living at the time. This actually saves me a lot of stress pondering my future options.) But I wanted to throw out the idea that some of that attrition may be part of the original plan rather than a retreat from homeschooling, depending on a family's motivation for homeschooling. In our case, we will likely have (probably private) options for secondary school that fit our educational goals and will be worth the money and the time commitment; I'm not willing to make the same sacrifices for kindergarten.

I'm using it now with my K'er and my 4yo is tagging along for the coloring pages and I love it. I wanted a year of US history before starting SOTW in 1st. This is great - perfect for this level (my K'er is generally doing 1st grade academics with a 5yo attention span), nice 1 page narratives with the major highlights, complementary coloring pages, narration and copywork, optional projects (I've done 1/14 I think), and a good booklist that includes picture books, chapter books, and easy readers. Not sure what else to say about it, but I really like it. If you have any specific questions, let me know. I am not doing the state study component, just because I don't feel the need to do a state study right now.

Thank you for posting this.

My husband and I had been on the fence about homeschooling for the past few years, and had basically decided to give our (reportedly quite good) public school a chance for half-day kindergarten for our oldest. Then I went to the parents' meeting and spoke with the assistant principal about their attendance policy, because the published district policy is that more than 7 unexcused absences in a year is a mandatory referral to CPS and truancy court. According to the published policy, absences are excused for illness, religious observance, and death in the family, and any other absences at the principal's discretion with prior approval. I asked specifically about military deployments/homecomings since my husband will be returning from a 6mo deployment in October. I was told that they are specifically UNexcused because "we have so many military families" (?!?!) and "kindergarten isn't what it used to be." Aside from the fact that I can't even get from here to the ship in homecoming traffic, get my husband, and get us home in the 3.25h of half-day kindergarten, can you imagine if everyone got to go meet Daddy and he didn't? And then see him the next day, after 6 months away? And this kid is being hit hard by this deployment. So, we're homeschooling next year. Not only because I don't want to be in truancy court by mid-October (we're also planning to go see the Pope in September), but because a school that takes this approach is not going to be a good fit for our family in other (as of yet unforeseen ways). The schools can't have it both ways - constantly complaining that they can't succeed because of "the family" and then turning around and being so unsupportive of those families.

Thank you for your lovely description here - so inspiring. My rising kindergartener, so who has never really done any school, told me he is really excited about college because he can study whatever he wants. He wants to study "George Washington crossing the Delaware and tricking General Cornwallis at Princeton." The good thing is that we can read all about it now, too.

Thank you for all your insights. As we get started on our homeschooling journey, it's so helpful to hear that re-reading isn't a problem even in a curriculum sense. One of the things that has been hardest for me to wrap my mind around when we started thinking about homeschooling is that so much of "homeschooling" seems like what we already do and what we would be doing anyway even if they went to school, at least in the early years (and we're not unschool-ish at all). It's hard to resist overthinking it all, and it's reassuring to hear from the veteran homeschoolers that your kids do well without hours of worksheets every day. Not that we want them to spend hours a day doing worksheets, but it's a paradigm shift. Personally, I've reread at least one of the Anne books annually for the last 25 or so years, so I have nothing against re-reading for pleasure, but it's nice to hear that reading things at the "wrong" time won't mess up their understanding of punctuation or something.

Please indulge me here as I try to plan the next decade of my life, as I'm new at this and I'm sure we'll end up changing lots as we get going, but . . . I am starting formal homeschooling next year for my rising kindergartener (5.5yo), in a classical/CM kind of way (still feeling out where we fall on the trajectory). As I try to finalize my booklist for next year, I'm running into the problem that books I was planning for K (and some books we've already read/listened to) are scheduled in formal programs I am considering for 1st grade (ELTL, AO, Mater Amabilis, FLL I think). Especially in the more CM-methods, it seems that it would be beside the point to be doing a book for school twice (thinking here of the attention/first reading issue). For example, I had picked Beatrix Potter for our Term 1 literature selections next fall, but it's also scheduled at the beginning of English Lessons Through Literature for grade 1, and same with Kipling for Term 3. Now, I'm not committed to ELTL, but it's definitely a real contender, and I don't want to jump the gun and use it early, nor do I want to "ruin" it if repeating the book would do that. On a related note, we recently listened to the audio of Paddle to the Sea by Holling C. Hollings on a road-trip (amazing - everyone loved it), which is scheduled in AO Yr 1 or 2. Obviously, there are plenty of good books, but in a program like ELTL subbing the book would make it sort of pointless, it seems. 1) Are these real concerns or am I just borrowing trouble? 2) If these are real concerns, what about younger siblings? We do the vast majority of our read-clouds with my two boys (21mos apart, currently 5.3 and 3.5, will be 2yrs apart in school grade-levels), so what to do with the second child? And the third? 3) Is Wayfarers by Kathy Jo DeVore the answer to this sort of problem? I've only glanced at it in a cursory fashion, but maybe? Any and all advice welcome, either related to specific programs or more generally how you handle this. I'm trying (ha!) to be fairly relaxed in our K year, but I'm a planner by nature, and when I do see these concerns, some people have these really complicated whole-family schedules.