Try writing on a paper towel and see if you still bleed. Then try writing on a paper towel with a pencil. Is there still pressure on the reverse? Is the writing raised on the reverse? Is it difficult for your child to write light enough that the raised writing/pressue does not show? If none of this is a problem then it is your pen. I find that there is more bleeding with the wider nibs (points). I write with a fine or very fine for this reason and also it allows me to write in the margins of books. Try one of the other brands, they might be better in your daughters hand and her style of writing. Sometimes its the tool and not the person. Alicia in New Zealand

I was so exasperated I was willing to pursue an OT, when I read through the posts on the board here and realized there were things I could do to help her. So I have a book on fine motor skills exercises coming, got her a fountain pen, and have her doing these lessons. I don't know if it will work, but I'm trying. Elizabeth you are doing a great job and doing all the right things! Let me know if you need any suggestions with the fine motor book. Alicia in New Zealand

Elizabeth I have one in my hand now and the size should be fine. I am 5'4 and use a med. glove. With the cap off the top of the pen is just short of my knuckle when held in writing position. with the cap on it just passes my knuckle. The cap also give a nice counter weight to the back of the hand to compensate for the force of my finger on the front of the pen. The pen for someone of my size and weight is almost too light and a bit distracting without the cap. My 8 year olds have no problem using it with the cap off but they are both under 5 feet and smallish or have small/thin hand/fingers. The photos on the jetpens site only show the front not the pen in the whole hand so hope what I said helps. Given her size and success with the pen consider moving her up to a Lamy Safari for a holiday gift or order one of these at the same time you order the Mini. http://www.jetpens.com/product_info.php/cPath/214_371/products_id/4358 If you have already placed your order they will combine if its the same day. It has the lightness of the Mini and the cost factor is great. It will allow you to try out a longer pen for only $3.00. Choose a fabulous color and see how it goes. My daughter who struggles with penmanship use both depending on what she is writing. She uses the Mini for longer things and the Preppy in the purple she prefers for fill in the blank/short answer stuff. She cant decide between cherry red and purple. Very very happy to be able to help on something other than MCT or Core Knowledge. Alicia in New Zealand

Yes you can have only one "body" called a pen holder in the more expensive pens. The cartridges just pop in and out in about 5 seconds to change colors. If you have very different colors like purple and candy red you may want to do a quick rinse and blot with a tissue. You can also just start writing and not worry about the transition color combo as the two colors mix. I find that my son who writes in shades of green and blue dont like the colors to mix and my daughter likes to see what happens when they do. If its for practice pages I dont care but for pages we will keep like in history or final drafts for english I have the nib (tip) rinsed and patted dry first. Buying different cartridges is a cheap way to have multiple pens without YOU trying to keep track of all of your kid's pens. Mine seem to do better when they only have one body/penholder. On the other hand if motivation is an issue for kids have had a previous bad experience with writing I have different colors for different days or subjects. Its a cheap way to get them moving. It's also something positive to add to writing/penmanship. HTH Alicia in New Zealand

So glad I can offer you something ! No mess with the cartridges. They are self contained just like the cartridges on ballpoints. I would recommend these to start with for a number of reasons: I dont know how much you or your daughter will use the pens I dont know the size or dimensions of her hand They are pretty cheap The OT in me loves that they are perfectly sized in terms of length for a child's hand or for an adult who writes a lot. It is so much easier (on joints and muscles) and sensible to give a child a shorter writing instrument. They are lightweight, something to really look for in any writing tool. The joy of a fountain pen is that the ink flows as soon as paper contact is made with the nib (tip) reducing the need to press into the paper. The child then has less tendency to be tense or push so hard that they leave ridges on the back of the page. I have found this to be true with boys more than girls and with nervous children and children who dont like writing. I think your dd is in that last group? Get her these http://www.jetpens.com/product_info.php/cPath/214_70/products_id/421 as the "pen holder" or body of the pen for just $4.50. Then something like this for $2.00 a color for a 3 pack of cartridges. With my dd who writes like she is NOT the child of an OT I let her choose 3 colors and she changes based on how she feels that day or how the wind is blowing;) http://www.jetpens.com/product_info.php/cPath/214_70/products_id/600 I like this company because they have lots of variety, ship really fast even over here and have great prices. Read the reviews that are at the very bottom of the page for each product. NOTE: the same pen in different colors of ink will have different reviews. They literally post the comment to the exact page the reviewer was on, not the product page for the pen in general. Soo, you might want to look at the above pen's reviews in brown, black, hot red ink to get a feel for it. As I said I am really biased. I only write with fountain pens and my kids start cursive at about 6 with a fountain pen in hand. My 5year old dd is starting next week (when the new school year begins here) with a bright orange Petite Mini. She is starting with Cursive First. The Lamy Safari is what I use for myself as it is light and affordable. I am not really a collector, dont have the money for that, I need pens that take the pressure of writing off my joints and help my writing look good. It takes a while to write well with a fountain pen if you have been using a ball point but it is worth it. http://www.jetpens.com/product_info.php/cPath/214_452/products_id/1930 There,way more than you asked I am sure. Let me know if you have anymore questions, PM me if I miss you. We are going into weekend Suzuki workshop mode here tomorrow so I might not get to the board but do check my email. Alicia in New Zealand

Many people don't realize what a complete program CK is. In some school districts it is the primary or driving curr. for the k-6 or k-8 years. For planning, scheduling and background knowledge enabling me answer the "whys" I use the Teacher's Handbook (TH.) The TH for each grade is approx. 400 pages. The TH topics are: history, science, biographies, music, art, poetry, speeches, idioms, grammar, writing topics, and literature for the year. Each topic for each grades has background information that the teacher needs to know beyond what you may actually teach but fleshes out the topic , activities, blackline masters, vocab, cross curr connections, standards, essay topics, projects, additional books and resources, research ideas, questions and answers, topic analysis, objectives, ect. The Handbook is also aligned with the Pearson Hx. texts. All topics are coordinated to the history and lit topics for the year. Much like TOG which I lust over -but much more streamlined and only one year at a time- and will go to once mine are ready for logic stage/middle school. CK ends with the bulk of their support materials at the end of 5th grade. I use the month by month planner as little dated daily boxes make me crazy. CK allows me to not spend all my time planning, but allows me to tweak, add in latin, spanish, instruments, nature studies , and now New Zealand history/culture without overloading my kids or myself. Here is more info on the Starter Kit, I just use 4th as an example with a little explanation for each item. Please note that you would need to get the materials from somewhere. The "What Your __grader Needs to Know" (wygntk) books are just a summery per subject of the year. In other words I use SOTW to do the history as laid out in the Sequence, I use McRuffy / FLL and/or Phonics Road for language, Mammoth Math and McRuffy Math for math, ect. For science or history or art ect. you could just read the text from wygntk book then get out you living books and flesh out your topic. This with the additional background info in the Teachers Handbook on the topic to help you understand what you are trying to teach as well as why. Or you could just read books (library or purchased) on the topics as they come in the schedule, do a narration, notebook page, or handout from the included blackline masters, read the TH for your own knowledge to teach completely and call it done. You could also just choose a science/history/art textbook. How you get it done is up to you, the idea is to get at least this much done thus, CORE Knowledge. The CK foundation is working to provide material to help support teachers/home educators. These materials include the Teacher Handbook. This is why many unschoolers like CK; the TH makes them feel secure in their knowledge base, provides teaching ideas, tells why each topic is important and allows them to decide how to teach the material themselves. You could do this with history, science, biographies, art, music, grammar, poetry, idioms, math. Fourth Grade Starter Kit $199.00 The Fourth Grade Starter Kit includes one of each of the following: * K-8 Sequence the whole curr in detail for the elementary years * What Your Fourth Grader Need to Know (Paperback) most commonly seen part of the program. It has color photos and contains lots of the shorter selections like poems, as well as very short summaries of history and science topics. Not enough to be used as an overall textbook but a really great portable resource * Teacher's Handbook, Fourth Grade This is what keeps me coming back to CK after trying WinterPromise and Sonlight. I have all the background info I need to help me understand a topic as well as teaching tips and listings of additional resources, cross curr. suggestions, how a particular topic is tied to prior learning as well as to future learning. Voc lists as well as handouts if I want to use them. This is a hardcover text and the blackline masters are separate but included in the price of the TH. This allows me to be the teacher and not be limited to learning along with my kids all the time if I am weak in a particular area. * Art Resources, Fourth Grade Art prints on 8 x11 cardstock with questions/answers and looking ideas on the back. Tied into the history topic in general. In older grades tends to focus on a particular movement or artist. * Text Resources, Fourth Grade Since this program was developed for public school it does not assume that all kids have access to lit/poems/speeches at home. These are blackline masters without illustrations of all the lit/poems/speeches/sayings/nursery rhymes so that each child could have a copy. We use for copywork, reading together, marking up sentences ect. * Day-by-Day Planner Workbook, Fourth Grade For those who are not driven crazy by all the little boxes:tongue_smilie: * Day-by-Day Planner CD, Fourth Grade This includes the resource "Books to Build On" as a searchable document and has the info for the days dropped in for you. I have never used it. * Listen, My Children, Poems for Fourth Grade Small paperback book that has all the poems for the particular year. Nice but they are also in the Text Resources and of course the Teacher Handbook breaks down and helps you to teach each poem. This helped me to feel more secure in my teaching of poetry especially in my early days. I learned lots about applying literary devices from the Teacher Handbook. * Grades 3-5 Music CD Set The Sequence lists the movements/composers for each year. the Teacher Handbook has activities, lesson ideas, background info, voc. ect for each piece/composer * Coupon good for 25% off Pearson Learning History & Geography materials (coupon included with your shipment). These texts are really very good. I used them in general for upper grammar while my lower grammar used SOTW. Everyone on the same time period with texts suited to the age. CK sequence allows me to cover the material more than once in grammar years; fewer topics a year allowing more depth; American and world history scheduled every year; secular so I can add my own religious studies without having to edit; middle school history uses the concepts of Ideas to rotate back through history making the perspective feel fresh; modern history and problems are addressed including immigration, civil rights, space, ect. I encourage you to go the the site http://www.coreknowledge.org and download some samples, there is lots of good stuff. Alicia in New Zealand

Could you please pm me so we can make arrangements? Alicia in New Zealand

For drill I use an online program called bigmathtime.com, there is also big spelling, vocabulary and state time. For these programs you set the parameters for your kids. I choose to have mine do 100 math questions 4 days a week. I then choose their grade level. I can choose the percentge of questions devoted to add/sub/mult/divide. Within each of those 4 you can choose the level of difficulty. Skill and accuracy in each of the operations is graded seperatly so kids can progress in strong areas while not being held back in areas where they need more work. For example my kids do 100 problems starting with adding and subtracting with 0 up to 12. 1+0, 2+0 3+0 and 1-0, 2-0. To move from 0 up to 1 and beyond they have to achive I believe 80% min. for a specific number of sessions within a specific time frame per question. So at least 80% correct on 3 out of 6 last sessions with less then 5 seconds per question. Then the program automatically progresses them. At anytime on any day I can go in and change any of the parameters. My dd8 is doing add with numbers 9 and down, subtraction with 7 and down, double digit addition with carrying, multiplication up to 3. Again she has 100 questions and needs to answer each under 5 seconds with a score of 80% per section. She spends about 12 minutes doing this as her double digit addition is at 12 seconds a question, I only give her 15 questions in this area to curb frustration. It is doing great things for her mental math skills! When they move from say adding with 8 to adding with nine or up one number in times tables I tell them the first week not to worry about time focus on accuracy. That also helps. The program adjusts the questions based on their time to answer and the number correct. This program is fantastic! It is about $39 a year, not sure as I have both math and spelling which is just as flexible but have different pricing. Take a look at the demo it is very much worth it. I gave up on cd's as they were not as flexibe, and did not help ME as much as this program does. I get emailed the scores of reading within the hour with a breakdown of problem words and I get test scores sent to me. I can go in and print a weekly overview in different formats as well. I will do it about 3 years per child then stop as by 9/10 years old they should have these facts down cold for all 4 basic operations. Not sure if it goes into fractions and such as mine are just in 3rd grade now. HTH Alicia in New Zealand

Hi we are considering this for next school year which starts here in Feb. We used Level 1 and all learned a great deal and enjoyed it. We went back to McRuffy for 3rd which is the highest level out right now though they are working on 4th grade. In the effort to stay with a classical program that covers many bases/ integrated like McRuffy we are considering PR3 again. I would like to know if anyone has used this level (3rd). We did not do level 2 but did McRuffy 2 & 3, FLL, and MCT Aesop series as well as CM style living grammar books for 3rd grade. We will do the first level of MCT from Sept. to Dec. continuing with 1 sentence a day parsing. The MCT program is ment as an intro to the tech. then applied throughout the year. We need a program that will reinforce grammar, provide spelling/ phonics, word origins ( we love this), narration, word usage, punctuation, and lit. study. Thus our interest in PR3. We would have done Megawords, Voc from Class Roots, Writing Tales, and FIAR/BeyondFIAR in place of PR3. We will do LivelyLatin to round out our humanities:) Shipping is a huge issue so I am trying not to order too many different books to accomplish the same goals. They are also young and I just hate to see little ones carrying so many books. We have LOTS of living books for grammar, lit. and math as well as history and science. Reading material we are not short of. Organization and structure we need. I dont want to have to schedule and tweek. I dont want to pay lots of international shipping charges. When I add up the cost of all the separate pieces and compare to PR3 it is really all the same if not more separately when you add in answer keys/teacher editions. I find a number of reviews for level 1 but not much beyond that. Really want feedback on PR3 and maybe 4. Thanks in advance. Hope someone can help. Alicia in New Zealand

Hi we are doing both the new K and 3rd Color lang. arts, math, and 2nd science on a 4 day schedule. It works just fine with the kids. I usually get 4-6 lessons a week done in the language program. I find that some things we do with a white board or as a discussion like the questions from the readers free us up a bit. That little bit of reduction in writing means that there is room to finish a litter sooner. Dont let the 4 day schedule put you off at all the program is very through and flexible. If you need to you can read the plans for the next 5 lessons say and condense into 4 days without any stress or major rescheduling. Sometimes there is an activity I dont care for and skip that as well. I also use FLL2 for the memorization of poetry, grammar definitions and dont have any problems fitting that 10 minutes in as well. We did not memorize the first time through as it was just exposure, now in 3rd we are a little more serious and going back to memorize as it fits into McRuffy's schedule. I find that at this age for my kids, they have more understanding of what and why they are memorizing as McRuffy has activities to go along with the grammar learning that is not as oral as FLL 1/2 is . We are really enjoying this year. 3rd is a full program especially if you have the color editions. Separating the phonics from language skills has been a great improvement and makes me feel even more confident in the quality of the program. That;s really important as McRuffy is not one of the "hot" programs that gets talked about a lot on the board:tongue_smilie: Alicia in New Zealand

I use the Core Knowledge Sequence(CK). I use SOTW (younger kids) along with the Pearson Learning inc. History Texts (upper grammar) for the CK sequence along with the Instructor Guides which break down activities, worksheets, essay topics, ect for each topic in the history book. Everyone follows the rotation of CK just using age approp. texts. CK sequence allows me to cover the material more than once in grammar years; fewer topics a year allowing more depth; American and world history every year; secular so I can add my own religious studies without having to edit; middle school history uses the concepts of Ideas to rotate back through history making the perspective feel fresh; modern history and problems are addressed including immigration, civil rights, space, ect. For planning, scheduling and background knowledge enabling me answer the "whys" I use the Teacher's Handbook (400pgs.) . Each grade has more activities, blackline masters, vocab, cross curr connections, standards, objectives, ect. The Handbook is also aligned with the Pearson Hx. text as well as that grades topics in poetry, literature, science, art, and music. All coordinated to the history and lit topics for the year. All fleshed out with the same stuff as history allowing a teacher to teach the material even if their own background with it is weak. It was written for public school teachers who where bringing this classical method to their class but were not taught this way themselves and lacked the background from their teacher training courses. Very much like TOG in the support for parents just one year at a time. Easy peasy :) I just put this out as lots of people think Core Knowledge is just the "What Your___ grader Needs to Know" and dont really know what a fleshed out program has become over the years. Like many others I find that over time the older kids need a new presentation of the "old" material and the Pearson texts are really really good. Even though mine are only 8 they heard the material from SOTW before as they tagged along with older cousins so we are moving to the Pearson texts for 4th grade in Feb. SOTW and the activity guide are my choice every time for the first rotation. I used them for k-3 while doing CK sequence of topics as the CK materials for that age are not as good. The materials are expensive new but really good prices used. Alicia in New Zealand

Alicia in New Zealand

I found that when I tried to leave McRuffy and go to SWR (after taking the conference) my kids were also very unhappy with the amount of time "just spelling" was taking. I tried to make it short and sweet but they were very unhappy. I did not want to give up on SWR and our McRuffy 3rd grade was on a ships' deck somewhere in the Pacific for 4 months. I used spellingtime.com and put their words in based on the SWR list. Once they were online the kids were fine :glare: Everyday there is a spelling activity that focuses on the words themselves and there is testing every week. I get reports on their progress and they get game tokens for doing well. We did not produce a spelling notebook. Next year we will finish McRuffy series as 4th is not out and move on to Megawords which I have used before. I want to try the notebook again as I think it gives them a personal dictionary and history you dont get doing throwaway workbooks each year. This in addition to the word study , etymology, ect. spellingtime came as a package with bigmathtime, bigstatetime and bigvoctime. The website is now http://bigiqkids.com Alicia in New Zealand

I used the same book for the same grade levels and felt the same way. We were getting ready to relocate and I did not want to start something while our books were geing shipped. Instead of a quick review it ended up being a spine text. It made me go back and really do FLL which I REALLY respect but dont like doing. My kids are fine with it. I hesitate with FLL3 because of that and plan on doing MCT but may look at Lang.SmartC for "worksheets" and review myself. As Vanessa said their programs tend to be advanced and it pays to look at the end of each of their topic sections or the very end of the book if you have it to see what the goals are. Look really carefully at the table of contents. This company is moving towards developing "spines" not just supplemental material and Lang.Smart is part of that move that is why it feels like a whole curr., its ment to. I talked to a rep about it and almost became a rep myself before moving out of the country. Alicia in New Zealand

Thanks for that great resource. I have a Mac and use Safari but am still having problems openig the LitTrips. I will keep trying as the screen shots for Abuela really excited me. Thanks again! Alicia in New Zealand

Thanks for your reply. I enjoy scifi/fantasy myself so that may work for me. I also love the idea of a proff. that can help me make my really long sentences really good! I think I may get it. Just wanted some feedback before I purchased it as I will "buy" US dollars to do so and that makes it more expensive. Thank goodness for the sales they have. Alicia in New Zealand

Janice I saw that you were considering this course last summer. It is currently on one of their 2 day sales. I would love a review of this if you did it. I am interested in it for myself, I have two 8 year olds and a 5 year. I plan on using MCT materials with them along with CW Beginners starting in perhaps Oct.-last term or school year here; or Feb. beginning of school year. I need to be ready. I used much more traditional material last time around with my nieces and nephews but struggled with Voyages in English 7-8th grade. I want to prepare and use a different approach to help ME, thus MCT which we used in 7/8th grades last time. Building Sentences looks like WWE for grownups:tongue_smilie: Anyway I ramble, would love any feedback Alicia in New Zealand

We have used McRuffy for about 7 different children in our extended family homeschool. I am/have used both the black and white and the new color editions. I am currently using 3rd grade and K - again, but in color versions this time. My first McRuffy users are now in 6th grade and 4th grade. There are absolutely no regrets. Both kids are now in public school and in gifted/highly gifted language arts and social studies. We moved to New Zealand and those two are my nieces. I'll just address the new version changes and the 3rd grade changes. The new editions are worth buying over the old. There are more multisensory choices more activities that are actually doable, and more depth. The stories are VERY engaging to kids both boys and girls. The stories often continue over more than one book, setting kids up for more mature outside reading. It is very helpful to have the voc. words outlined on the back of the readers, in the teacher guide lesson by lesson and then as specific separate activities in the new Language and Reading workbook (L&R). L & R also covers the 8 parts of speech this year with parsing, poetry concepts, writing, dictionary skills ect. and punctuation. As it is now a whole separate book but integrated with the readers the depth is much greater than in the black and white workbook. The method is spiral so that concepts build and repeat. However there is not such a large gap in time between the repetition of concepts that the child forgets. We have had this problem using Saxon for math. When a concept repeats it does so with new elements that have been covered added in. I dont like the way writing is taught so I will add Writing Tales in about 2 months once copywork, narriation, and dictation are truly nailed. My kids are 8 this month doing 3rd grade. We did Explode the Code as extra practice which we finished last year. This year as they are done with ETC we did the online version (no shipping charges) for review. Yeah overkill, they lived ;) Spelling & Phonics workbook spends much time repeating/reviewing spelling rules covered in previous years but with more challenging words. This is similar in approach to using something like Explode the Code for k-3 then going on to Megawords. Same concepts, more advanced usage. If you like a workbook approach McRuffy will work for you. S & P also goes on to cover suffixes, prefixes, abbreviations, plurals ect. There are I believe 4 test through the year that cover material from both books. 3rd grade also has some hands on learning included. Overall I dont have any fear in doing these as my base for lang.arts. I use FLL to drill the things I want memorized like definitions of parts of speech. I have the penmanship books as well as that helps to reinforce the letter forms we have learned, provides for copywork and gives a space for dictation if I dont want to use the sentence printed on the page. Sentences are based on prior and current word list so is great for review. As the sentence is in the teachers manual I often have them write the sentence from dictation, then copy it and compare. Easy peasy. I started without the penmanship books the first year but within a month ordered them. Much the same as people order the WWE workbook even though its all in the main book. There is a choice in penmanship styles. I choose one and stuck with it and did not spend anymore time being obsessive (ok with that at least). I use the penmanship books all the way through starting with whenever he offers cursive as we are Cursive First for the preschool/K years. Dont want to debate it, it works for us for a large number of kids. Expect for one we brought home late (4th grade) from public school. I will continue with Michael Clay Thompson as I have used them with middle schoolers to great success, had two that were very strong in lang. I will use the first three primary books as a way to integrate what has been covered in McRuffy , probably during summer break, while doing sentence island slowly over the year. I have the grammar island, sentence islance, practice island and music of hemisphers(poetics). I hope to use these as they are intended at the end of grade 3 before moving on to Megawords, as spelling , latin(continuing), and probably Writing TalesII or Aesop in 4th. The Logos School poetry books are really excellent for teaching the mechanics of poetry while McRuffy gives a good intro of the mechanics and writing of different types of poems. I just include this to give you an idea of what regular old kids are capable of when finished with third. I have had 2 others finish third before this year and have tow in 3rd and one in K. There is a secular version of 3rd grade if you want/need it the religious version has about 4 readers that are religious in a nonsectarian sort of way. We are secular homeschoolers in general but dont pass up good stuff if the religious content is minor. Our schedule took a sever beating when we moved to New Zealand in July as the school year here starts Feb1st and ends at the end of November. So July is the middle of the school year, but they had been on summer break in day camp for 6 weeks so we could pack and be ready. I might not have done the ETC and finished McRuffy 2nd if I had not packed it in our container of household goods that arrived in November. We love McRuffy and hear there is a 4th grade in the works. I am waiting to see before I ship all that other stuff over here.

Hi Melissa I am doing the same here with another mom. We are trying to decide on a few things based on book availability mainly, we dont want to have people spend more than they can right now. Getting all the books here is a serious issue. Here are the groupings we are trying to decide between: 1. fairy tales- various Cinderellas, gingerbread boys, 12 dancing princess', 3 little pigs. You get the idea 2."What if the Wolf were an Octupus" by Royal Fireworks Press 3. Junior Great Books and do socratic discussion for olders and activities for youngers using only one story/tale/fable 4. FIAR 5. Homeschoolshare.com Hope that helps :) Alicia in New Zealand

Thanks to everyone who has sent cards to us here in New Zealand. We have about 10 to go out this weekend. My kids LOVE getting mail. We plan on putting them up on the wall when we move with pins linking the places they came from. We have the Story Disks from FIAR to do this also so they are excited. It really makes geagraphy so much more meaningful. Regards, Alicia in New Zealand

Congrats to you for your work and inspiration to your son. They have to be inspired or it just dosent happen, you were the example :) The breakthrough came for my daughter not with the 1,000 or so books I paid to ship all the way to New Zealand; why would she read one of those? Nooooo, she borrowed a "girl loves horse" book from another homeschool family and has not looked back since. She is now reading all of her sisters FIAR books for the first time to herself. Its nice as she is recalling all the good memories she had with them. Redwall is great and I cant wait until mine are ready, I have them all too. Alicia in New Zealand

Hi Kate,you got some really good suggestions, I enjoyed reading this thread myself. Here are a few things I have used with the 5/6 yr olds I've had: FIAR (http://www.fiveinarow.com) or http://www.homeschoolshare.com if you want to see if a book you have has been done by another family. This is a great way to add activities and depth to the books or topic (animals or science stuff) you are covering with things other than coloring. You could use homeschool share to look up the name of a book you have or to look for books and activities on something you want to do. Lots of hands on stuff with printouts and worksheets generally attached. More "advanced" books like "Mr.Poppers Penguins" have chapter by chapter activities. All written by homeschool moms for other homeschoolers. RightStart Math Games, get it with the game pack if you can afford to at this time. So many great games covering so many subjects. You will use this throughout elementary school. Livingmath.net This is a great resource. I wanted to make math something that they just breathed. Math is "taught" using real books and tied into the history sequence. Spend some time if you can just looking through it. It has helped us over the years take the fear out of math. The books recommended are fantastic, often on sale, often found used for cheap. The Math Start books are great. K'Nex and LEGO and Lincoln Logs and Gears, Gears, Gears: using plans to start building from. I make mine follow the plan once, photograph it then they are "free" to be creative. I find that following the plan gives them an idea of how to use new pieces and how to make basic shapes. They then use the pieces fully. K'NEX allows you to build your own kit. You choose which models you want to build and they package it with the child's name "Child's Building Kit" including a personalized CD with the instructions to print out as needed. Gears, Gears, Gears has two books with activities to help kids get more out of them and to teach science principals gently. I second the nature study idea. If you want help starting " A Pockful of Pinecones" is a good read and then consider http://handbookofnaturestudy.blogspot.com . I ordered her ebook for under $10 to really get me going and it has been worth every penny. It just helps me get it done. I really liked the idea of nature study but needed help with structure. I really liked supporting a fellow SAHM. Puzzles: Melissa & Doug as well as Lauri. These are long lasting so are good value. Once mine could do 40 piece puzzles I made them turn them over and do that way. Giant floor puzzles with 40, 60 and 100 pieces are great and cover a variety of subjects. Nice thick cardboard will last. You could also get into 3-D puzzles or the geography puzzles that only cover one continent at a time so they (and you ;) ) really learn that part of the world. audible.com there are lots of places to get free audio books but we like Audible. They get one and we get one each month for a flat fee of $20 regardless of the size of the book. As long as it not volumes. All the classics as well as new stuff and popular titles. We burn to CD and listen over and over and over and over. After a while you get enough for a rotation and you get a mental break. We listened to "The Magicians Nephew" for what seemed like forever but they then are getting lots out of "Lion, Witch and Wardrobe". Handcrafts. It's not that I want you to do the Charlot Mason thing -we do- its just that as an OT I saw so many kids that cant entertain themselves, product anything without an elaborate kit, or batteries its sad. Fine motor control, attention to task, attention to detail, pride in self, giving to others, creativity, self care ect. She is not too young to begin early sewing -start with a kit if you need it for you. Pottery, longstitch, latchhook, leather work, melty beads, woven potholders. Look for clearance kits or supplies if you are not familiar with these and hold them until she is ready for them. barebooks.com is a great place to get blank game boards, blank books, art books. The possibilities are endless: vowels, food groups, planets, types of horses, backyard birds, textures, family members, 8 part of speech, ect. Consider lapbooks or maybe just small folded books using the different folds for a creative way to show what she has learned. These can be worked on partially independently while you tend "baby". Hope that helps some. You are well on your way to providing a great education for both of your children. Just remember that what you miss in first grade will NOT keep her out of Harvard. :D Alicia in New Zealand

Thank you for mentioning that book I just ordered one from Amazon. I try to alternate FIAR with a notebook/lapbook page with Jr.Great Book and Socratic Disscussion for mine this year. Trying to develop depth while meeting the developmental needs of 8 year olds. I have been using "Suppose the wolf were an octupus" by Royal Firewoks Press. This will add to that I hope. Once again thanks. Alicia in New Zealand

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