Thanks for this, it all confirms how I was feeling. Last night she wanted to read about biomes, which was not that interesting to me and was essentially a school textbook, but she checked it out from the library and was very interested in it. And I thought well, who am I to say she isn't interested in reading, it's just not what I am interested in. When I try to read fiction to her, she just is NOT into it. I tried Charlotte's Web and Harry Potter and she would rather read Magic School Bus books or nature books. So I guess that's just where her interest lies and I should support that. Thanks for your thoughts, everyone. Oh and that makes sense about the materials and what certain age levels focus on.

My dd is 7.5 and has been reading for almost 2 years now. She does read Science books during the day sometimes, which seems to be her main interest in terms of reading material. But she used to read chapter books at night, and now she just goes to sleep. I'm not complaining about the sleep, but in my happiness that she was just going right to bed, I didn't realize that her reading had completely stopped. When she does read before bed with us, she usually chooses books way below her reading ability. I don't mind her reading those books, I guess I'm just wondering if it's a phase or if I have a girl who doesn't like to read on my hands. I guess it's just foreign to me, as I loved to read as a kid so I don't even know if that's what it would look like, or if I should try to encourage her? She does write short books all day long (they are very short, but some days she'll have written 6 different books) but she seems to have lost interest in reading. I don't want to push her into doing something she doesn't have a natural interest in, but somehow it seems like it's important? But I don't know if that's because it was something that was important to me, and I don't want to push that on her. Anyway, your thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated, thanks!

Thank you so much for all of this!! So sorry it took me so long to respond to this, I didn't have my notifications on and I forgot I had posted here. This is all great and I think I was just rushing it and didn't read the HIG thoroughly enough. I'm going to get 1A and start at the beginning. Is there a forum here where people re-sell their books?

Hi everyone, My daughter (7 years old) has a natural aptitude for Math, she gets concepts more quickly than I do. We had been doing standard Math workbooks and I just recently got the Singapore Math 1B. We just started it and I feel like it's actually more confusing to her than what we were doing before. The first 30 pages were review, but when they jumped to adding things like 36+8 she was much more confused about how to do it in her head like they do in that book, than when we wrote it out and I had her carry the 1, etc. I'm not sure if I should listen to that and go back to the old Math workbooks, or if we should stick it out and that she will eventually grasp it. I don't want her to stop liking Math. It has only been 1 day, I should mention! I just wondered if anyone else had this experience. Thanks!!

Oh thank you all so much, this is so inspiring and why I wanted to homeschool in the first place! We started doing it with a charter that was going to make her do the standardized testing and report what we'd done, etc. and I decided to leave it and do it on my own. Everything you've all said here is why. Thank you again! I'm really so glad i found this site.

Thank you so much this is so helpful! I had not heard of that homeschooler's buyers co-op. And many of the other things you mentioned. It will hopefully save me a lot of money as I KNOW I have been overspending as I've been a little overzealous picking out the curriculum! I will be looking into everything mentioned here, if anyone else has any other suggestions I'd love to hear them! I think I'm a little worried I"m not covering everything because my daughter is very fast in her work and is also currently ahead so we haven't been spending that much time each day traditionally working. As far as the nature study goes, I love that idea, but like I said I'm worried I'll be missing things she'll need to know. Do you all not worry about that? I should probably relax a little!

Hi everyone! So glad I found this site. My daughter is 7, in second grade. She was going to a Waldorf inspired school so she wasn't taught any academics yet (she was in 1st there) but she is a very fast learner and is reading at a 3rd grade level, but spelling probably at a 2nd grade level right now. I got AAS level 1 and that was too easy, so I got Level 3 because like I said she is a very fast learner and I think I can catch her up in the gaps there if she doesn't already know it. It hasn't arrived yet so I'm not sure. Anyway, right now all I have set up so far is AAS Level 3 and Singapore Math 1b, 2a. She reads voraciously and reads writes little "books" so I'm pretty sure she's at 3rd grade level for reading comprehension. So I'm just wondering if anyone had any ideas for curriculum especially for science and history. I"m also wondering if I need to get a specific book(s) for grammar, or if we can just go over it together with worksheets. We are a secular family so I'd rather not do any religious centered materials like Sonlight. No offense meant to anyone who uses it, it's just not for us. Thanks so much in advance! Natasha