I second the Education Unboxed videos. My 4 year old is dying to do real school, so she participates whenever I do one of those activities. I definitely think he can tell you the answers orally or give him number cards so he can select the answer. His handwriting will come around. I was having my son do xtramath and couldn't figure out why he wasn't getting answers right that he knew. It turns out finding the numbers on the keyboard was too hard, so now we have him tell us and we type it. He had a big jump in correct answers and is now progressing at a reasonable rate.

We had them at our old house and I didn't think much about it. Our new house doesn't have them and a year after moving here I still miss them. I guess I need to buy some, but it's not going to be cheap.

I've never used anything like this but I think my kids would like this. At $.10 it's worth trying it out.

We sing more praise music than hymns at our church these days so our kids only learn some through church. We have a hymnal and sing our favorites with the kids at bedtime. If I can't remember how a melody goes I look for a video on YouTube. My husband is the singer in the family so he's usually the one introducing them to the kids. We've taken the kids to the quarterly hymn sing at my in laws church too, they sing more traditional songs there.

Yes but singing is definitely part of a typical worship service.

I was at GHC in Cincinatti last weekend and saw several Muslim women. It is a Christian convention but not all sessions have Christian content. I attended 10-12 sessions and only two were overtly Christian. I don't think one of those would have made a non-Christian uncomfortable since it wasn't preachy (I'm a Christian though so you may have felt differently). You can kind of determine from the class title or speaker names if there will be Christian content. My husband sat in one of Jim Weiss' sessions, I think it was the Thomas Jefferson one, he enjoyed it and wants to get a book that was mentioned. You can always sit toward the back of the room so that if a session isn't what you expected you can slip out. There was one session I went to that was a dud but I was toward the front and didn't want to be a disturbance. I really enjoyed the vendor hall. It was helpful getting to flip through things and picking up catalogs from companies I had never heard of. I bought several things from Rainbow Resource and PHP.

I'm glad to hear it stopped.

I only have the 2nd edition and I'm not home to see what it says, but I'll give you a bump.

I'm sorry, I hope tomorrow is better.

If you put out something like a mattress or washing machine you are supposed to call for pick up but junkers usually drive through and get anything of value before trash day.

I can't figure out how to attach a picture from my phone but that looks very neat to me. My 6 year writes very neatly for school, similar to your son's writing. For non school writing, he tends to add random capital letters and his spacing is either way too close or way too far apart.

Full day kindergarten has been here for many years. There is a lot of red shirting in the private schools and the upper income schools. I know personally a boy who turned 7 in kindergarten. There are a lot of 4 year old kindergartener students in the lower income schools. The districts that still have half day kindergarten do not have as much red shirting, but I'm basing that on what my friends say about their children's classes, not statistics. All day kindergarten is one of the many reasons I initially began investigating homeschooling. The bus comes through our street a little after 6:30 and returns around 3. I could not picture that long of a day for my son.

This isn't exactly what you asked, but what about using a bar magnifier with readers you have? I'm not sure where you would buy one, maybe someplace like Walgreens, but I bet amazon has them too.

What about wood working instead of wood carving? Get him a hammer, nails, a saw, and some scrap 2x4s.

I got glasses in the past year due to an astigmatism. The first week or so I didn't really think my glasses were helping, then I went a couple days without them and realized how much easier it was to see. Mostly my eyes don't feel tired at the end of the day anymore.

I like Jan Brett (The Mitten & others), Don Freeman (Corduroy & others), Robert McClosky (Make Way for Ducklings & others), Loren Long (Otis). I like some Virginia Lee Burton books (Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel). The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein is another favorite in our house. The Cricket in Times Square (can't remember the authors name right now) is a longer picture book that would work well for a two year old too. I tend to check out 20+ books at a time from the library and have found some real treasures that way. If you have a young 2 year old he may prefer repetition so he really gets to know the stories. My nearly 2 year old wants the same 2-3 books every day. My 4 year old rotates through several but still likes a lot of familiar stories too.

We started taking our kids between their 1st and 2nd birthdays partly because our friend is a hygentist and recommended that age, and partly due to both my husband and MIL having a phobia of dentists. We did not want our kids to develop that phobia. With our 3rd child we intended to wait until he was 2 to begin taking him but he was born with a clogged saliva gland and it was getting larger. The pediatrician had been keeping an eye in it, but when she got concerned we had the dentist take a look at it. We have never had dental insurance, it is cheaper for us to pay for dental visits through our HSA. We do take the kids every 6 months although I have been debating changing it to 9 months, since they seem to have healthy teeth and no plaque build up. My husband and I have both been lucky in that we never had cavities until our 20s though, if we required more than regular cleanings we would start carrying dental insurance.

Thanks for your suggestions, I was only coming up with picture books. I think books in Spanish would be fine, if the school doesn't want them for the library, they can go home with the kids in the camp. The girls in my group last year were surprised to learn I had books at my house. I don't think all the kids are in homes without books, but many are. I plan to call the school librarian too and see if she has books on her list they haven't been able to afford to buy. I may see if I can get in contact with the teachers in upper grades. Maybe they need copies of something for their classroom and haven't been able to get it.

I think you will find that as you get more involved in the homeschooling community, you will learn about more opportunities. You don't necessarily have to join a co-op to find them. Sometimes it's just being at a park or library in the afternoon and running into other homeschool parents will help you learn about what's available in your area.

Our church is going to be doing a book drive for an inner city public school as part of our VBS. The books will be donated to the elementary school through a camp and the students may be able to keep some of the books. I helped with this camp last year and was a little appalled at the quality of the school library. This camp is asking for donations from area churches and some of the book donations have started arriving. In the first shipment of about 100 books, there were a handful quality books. Most of the donations were the level one easy reader type of book. I think the kindergarten and first grade students will enjoy those, but there was nothing for 4th and 5th graders. There was nothing considered a classic, no books with chapters, no non-fiction. The other thing I noticed is that most of the characters were white. The student body at this school is about 40% African American, 40% Hispanic, and 10 % Caucasian. I don't think there needs to be a complete focus on only having African American or Hispanic characters, but I do think we should be conscious of it. I thought about putting together a list of quality books as a suggestion. I know a lot of people at my church will want to donate books, but won't put a lot of thought into what to purchase. If they have a list I think many will place an order through Amazon or go to one of our local bookstores. So, what should I put on the list?

There is a state park near Watertown and a couple lakes. There is hiking and horse trails at most of the state parks, you would be close to Minnesota too, MN has more trees and very nice state parks. Hunting, fishing (including ice fishing) snow mobiling, and boating are popular outdoor activities. SD is 95%+ Caucasian, I don't know specifically about Watertown. My guess is that the primary minority population is Native American. Here's a link to the visitors center: http://www.visitwatertownsd.com/contact-us/

This year has gone really well. I was really stressed before we started but my main goal was for my son to learn to read, he is reading very well now. His handwriting has improved immensely and he's doing fine in math even though he doesn't particularly enjoy it. We've done lots of reading and I've loved watching how the different books have expanded his vocabulary and creativity.

My kids are still young but in a couple years there is lots to do. There is a city wide youth choir and orchestra, and children's theatre open to any kids through audition. A homeschool co op has a drama club and soccer team for high schoolers, I think they have other things as well. A nearby private college offers weekly music class specifically for homeschoolers. My minister has organized a basketball team for his son, they play other self organized teams.

I don't remember for sure on snowfall it's a lot less than Michigan, I want to say 30"-40" a year. I do remember that it is cyclical. I can remember in high school one winter there wasn't any snow for cross country skiing. The next winter the snow by our driveway was taller than our suburban. If you are coming from Michigan winter won't be much of a shock to you. My husband moved there from KY and it was shocking to him. Of course we had a snowstorm around Thanksgiving that year and the snow didn't melt completely until early May. He still talks about it.

I grew up about 45 minutes from there and still have family in the area. I felt like it was a great place to grow up and we wouldn't mind raising our family there if my husband didn't love his current job. I can't tell you much about current politics/religion as I've been gone over 10 years. I also don't know about special services or horses, sorry. I did know a lot of people who had a few horses though and my sister has a couple, but she lives on a large farm. In general I think eastern SD is politically conservative to moderate. Most people seem to go to church, there are a lot of Lutherans but many other denominations as well. I'm not sure where you are moving from but winters can be harsh, they had blizzard warnings last week and it isn't unusual to go for a month and never see above 0 temps. While there are definitely nice days in October, November, April, and May don't be surprised if you get snow. May can be beautiful or cold and rainy. Summer is beautiful. It does get warm in summer (80s and occasional 90s) and locals say humid, but it's not humid at all compared to where I live now. I love visiting in the summer. SD is rural and one of the least populated states (not even a million people), so even if you live rurally now, it just feels different up there. There is no state income tax which is nice. Watertown is one of the largest cities in the state at about 20,000 people. I think Watertown has a small mall, Target, and Lowes or Menards (maybe both) so shopping won't be too bad. There is a small zoo and an art museum. You would be under 2 hours to Aberdeen or Sioux Falls for hospitals and shopping that you couldn't do in a Watertown. The closest major city is Minneapolis/St. Paul, about 4 hours away. One thing that's different up there is people seem to have no issue with driving an hour to get someplace. My SIL commuted for work about 75 miles each way for several years. I know that the state has changed a lot since I moved, so I hope that helps. Hopefully someone with current knowledge will reply.