Have you looked at Sonlight P3/4? It may be a bit expensive, but I see it as building the family library. You could probably also print out the list and get the books through your library or inter-library loan, as needed. I bought it for my oldest when she was 3, and my current 3-year-old is the fourth child to go through the books and simple schedule. I actually don't use the schedule anymore -- just the books. He loves them! The Flip-Flap Body Book is always the 3-year-old's favorite book -- without fail. My 3-year-old also uses a mixture of AAR Pre-Reading and 1 when he feels like "doing school" (he is reading, but still enjoys the Ziggy Zebra games and coloring pages from Pre) and Kate Snow's pre-school math curriculum (available as an inexpensive e-book).

My 5-year-old tags along with the older kids in Science, History and Latin. For her 3 R's, we do: - RightStart A (and Singapore Essentials K-B when she wants more math, or when I need her to work more independently) - AAR 1 - Zaner-Bloser 1 It all takes about 30 minutes if we do it properly (i.e., a few math lessons, and at least 15 minutes spent on reading), but can be done in 15 minutes if needed.

Are you using RightStart 2nd edition? I am doing RightStart A (2nd ed.) with my K-er, and do find it to be fairly scripted. Maybe it is not as scripted in the first edition? We used Saxon K, 1 and 2, before switching to RightStart for my K-er, and a blend of RightStart and Singapore for the older children. You may find Saxon K to be overly simplistic. It is a cute and friendly little program, but better suited for pre-K. No writing is required, but there are some optional pages for practicing digits. The material in Saxon 1 is K-level material (although also suitable for 1st grade), but my son was discouraged by the amount of writing and daily worksheets required. I did scribe some for him, but he found it discouraging as his fine motor skills lagged far behind his mathematical understanding. The writing was too much. There were tears. I wish I had known about RightStart when he was in K. We would have flown right through the material, and he would have loved it! I found Saxon 1 to take longer than 15 minutes, but maybe that is just my kids. Facts are practiced with flash cards.

We switched from HWT to Zaner-Bloser at the K level, and have had excellent results. The children have beautiful handwriting, and are very good at forming words with the correct capitalization and spacing. It was so painless to just work on a page or two a day rather than having to pull out all of the HWT stuff (CD, wood pieces, little cards, roll-a-dough letters . . .). The Zaner-Bloser books have some copywork mixed in with the letter practice, but we also do copywork in our WWE/FLL programs.

I was telling my husband that "the meat truck" was a thing (I had a strange visit from one a few years ago), when he confessed that 25 years ago or so, he actually *drove* a meat truck for a few days. He answered a want ad in the paper, and was given a freezer truck and some meat and instructed to drive around trying to sell it. He was unable to sell anything, and returned the truck after a few days. His impression was that it wasn't a scam, and he wasn't told to use any sleazy tactics. He just found that no one wanted to buy frozen meat from the back of a truck.

The Breville smart oven is amazing! We use it daily as a toaster and as a third oven. As we do not have a microwave, I appreciate that I can heat things in it very quickly on convection mode -- without heating up the house. I may have over-used it, but our first Breville died after just three years, so we did a lot of research before purchasing a second Breville through Hammacher Schlemmer, which offers a lifetime warranty (Breville only offers one year). My husband urged me to research other options, but I really just wanted another oven just like the old one.

My three oldest use Reflex Math, through subscriptions I bought at Homeschool Buyer's Co-op. They all love it, and are awarded with their Reflex Math time for completing regular lessons (we don't have regular video or computer games, so they find it all very exciting). The two oldest are now fluent in subtraction and addition, and are working on multiplication and division facts. The 5-year-old begged to try it (I thought she might be too young), and is now about half fluent in addition and subtraction. It has carried on in their regular math work and makes calculations quick and painless, as we can focus more on problem-solving and advanced concepts without having anyone counting on fingers or taking forever to complete a workbook page.

Yes - most outdoorsy/quality/comfort shoe stores carry Keens. I got mine at a shoe store in downtown Peterborough, NH, but have seen them elsewhere.

I have those Keens! I got them in the green color for spring, and wear them every day. They even look good with (gasp!) capri pants. http://www.keenfootwear.com/product/shoes/women/rose-sandal/loden!neutral%20gray ETA: I don't wear Birkenstocks because of a promise I made to myself as a child. Growing up in Ithaca, NY, I noticed all of the moms wore Birkenstocks, which I just found so unflattering. I remember thinking to myself that grown-ups must lose the ability to understand what looks attractive as they get older, so I would make a list as child of things I will never wear when I get older just in case I grew up and didn't know any more. Birkenstocks were at the top of that list (I forget what else was on it -- I think puff-sleeved floral dresses with lace collars, popular at my church in the mid-1980's).

We remodeled our kitchen two years ago, and have been very happy with our decision to install a 48" Bluestar range with six burners, a grill, and a double oven. Water boils almost instantly, there is plenty of room for everything I am cooking, and we can have grilled steak, vegetables and chicken indoors (essential here in New England when grilling weather is limited). I also have a pot-filler above the range, which I use every day. The thing I don't love about the kitchen is that it is still a bit small for our family, but it has a cathedral ceiling so there is an illusion of space. We had a local blacksmith design a large colonial-style chandelier to hang in the middle above the island. Gardenweb was an essential resource for us, as our contractor often had no idea what we were after.

I have the Basic Globe from Lakeshore Learning. I like that it is easy to see the boundaries and relatively easy to read the country names. It is also sturdy with a nice hardwood base and foam pads on the bottom so it will not scratch your table. http://www.lakeshorelearning.com/product/productDet.jsp?productItemID=1%2C689%2C949%2C371%2C896%2C754&ASSORTMENT%3C%3East_id=1408474395181113&bmUID=1433621101500 Previously, we had a poor quality globe that was forever unscrewing from its scratchy metal stand. And then there was the time when my 4-year-old peeled off the equator . . .

My kids love studying history with friends. We have a small co-op based on SOTW, so they all can sing "We're the MesopoTAAAA-MIIIAAAANS" all together at the top of their little lungs. Before we found our co-op, they just played their strange games together. Romans and Visigoths was a favorite. It originally involved ransacking the living room, but then evolved into a kind of tag that had more universal appeal and could be quickly explained and played on a playground.

We don't use A Beka for anything else, but I have found their health books to be an efficient way to cover health as the children can just read them and write any answers directly in the book. They are quite organized and cover the basic health topics. The kids find them moderately fun, and my 8-year-old sometimes has to be told to stop doing health and get to something else. I don't agree with everything, or with the nutrition recommendations, but I flip through the books as well and we talk about those points. And yes -- life. We use that as well. We are culturing bacteria in petri dishes on my kitchen windowsill right now -- from washed and un-washed hands. The children love to take a look each day and make gagging noises at the "unwashed" petri dish. It has been a very useful lesson.

I understand that the OP's title could come across as critical of abstinence teachings, but I don't think that was the intent. It was actually very eye-opening for me to think about how one can fully believe in abstinence before marriage yet see that the "purity culture" (elevation of virginity above all else; you are worthless if not a virgin) can be damaging. Maybe this is off-topic, but I would love it if someone could point me to some other threads on this topic -- how to effectively teach abstinence before marriage without shutting down conversation, without shaming victims, and without communicating that virginity is somehow tied to one's self-worth. In my church growing up, I saw it done very badly. It did seem that it was all about virginity, with no grace for victims or for those who may have fallen short of that ideal in the past.

This is a very good point. It is so important to communicate the wisdom of waiting for marriage, while also communicating that it's not all about virginity. A teenager or young adult should be free to make better choices in the future without feeling that nothing matters anymore because he or she is no longer a virgin. Because it does matter. Better choices can prevent the pain of an unwanted pregnancy, being linked to someone for the next twenty years, or having to deal with a partner's choices that may not be yours.

Thank you for the book recommendation. It seems like it could be a sensible approach. Growing up, I hated that exclusivity model. Go on a few dates, guy wants to get all exclusive very quickly, and then you're stuck until you can think of a reason to break up with him. It wasted so much time! I longed for the arrangements I read about in classic literature -- what I called the days of "one woman, many suitors." Interested men come to call, woman gets to have tea and conversation with them in the safety of her home, no exclusivity, no expectations, no pressure to become physical, until someone captures her heart and they get engaged. When I first learned of the courtship model, it sounded a little bit like my ideal classic literature model . . . until I saw how it was playing out in real life. Families were exercising way too much control, kids couldn't just get to know each other without all of these early marriage expectations, and many women in particular were staying home for a long long time (into their late 20's and 30's) with no marriage prospects in sight. ETA: um sorry, "tea," not "TeA."

I have been thinking a lot about this lately, as I remember my experience growing up in youth groups in the 1990's. I was not homeschooled, but do remember an activity in our church group in which a girl had to stand up in front of everyone with a large paper heart. She then walked across the room with different boys from the group, and each time had to give them a piece of the heart until there was nothing but a small scrap left. It was an illustration about dating and promiscuity and having "nothing" to offer a husband. A few years later, she married hastily at age 17 to an absolutely unsuitable boy, and was divorced a year later. I remember being sickened to hear said unsuitable boy crowing about how well marriage takes care of the lust problem. I want my children to make wise decisions, and not to waste their precious time and emotional energy in sleeping around, or to be so naive as to become easy victims of abuse -- but I also don't want to shame them into feelings of worthlessness or too-early marriages. I am wondering how to have healthy communication about this, and found the discussion of dialogue to be very helpful.

I have been hearing about Junior Great Books on the forum, which reminds me about a Great Books program I was a part of in high school. I think it involved reading certain books and then discussing them together in the library at lunch time, with the enrichment program director facilitating the discussion. Certainly much more fun than having to eat lunch in our noisy cafeteria! It looks like the Junior Great Books are short stories that are sold by grade level, along with a teacher's guide. Is this something that a homeschooler might do as a family, or would you form a group? And how would this differ from what a homeschool family would usually do in reading and discussing books together? I had difficulty figuring out how it would work from the website, and am interested in hearing if or how you have used this program.

Yes, Nordstrom has the best shipping and return policies -- and great clothes! My approach may seem a little bit nutty, but keep in mind that I have lots of young kids and live 45 minutes from the nearest clothing store, so it is working for me in this phase of life. I shop online exclusively, and just order everything I want to try in every size I think I might be (usually 2, sometimes 3 sizes per item). I try the clothes on in the evening when the kids are in bed, and then package up what doesn't fit and send it back for a refund. I don't mind a small flat fee for return shipping. Usually it is $8 or so, and well worth it for the convenience of not having to waste an entire day shopping while trying to pack five children into a fitting room with me. Actually, I shopped like this even before kids. I hate shopping. I hate malls. But sometimes I need clothes.

My 3-year-old spent the morning reading through his older sister's AAR lessons, writing a list of his plans for the day (including a very neatly printed reminder to do "Latin" -- he loves the monkey on the SSL DVD) . . . and then pooping in his pants. In exasperation, I said: "So, you're reading and writing . . . and pooping in your pants!" "No," he said. "I was not pooping in my pants while I was reading and writing. I pooped in my pants while I was drawing clowns in the basement."

I really like VP self-paced as a supplement, as it is something the kids can do on their own on a regular basis. It is entertaining for my first and second-graders, and the younger siblings often listen in. They all seem to be learning quite a bit. I just bought one course for them to share, as I do not care about recording grades and quizzes. We do SOTW with the activity guide, and I tend to go overboard with history so it can take a bit of time and is not something I can get to more than once or twice a week. The VP self-paced course ensures that something gets done even when I am too busy for history.

We just read lots of high-quality literature and talk about it. I took enough literature courses in college to feel confident that I do not need a literature guide. I can imagine they would be helpful for certain things we plan to read in later years -- maybe high school. If a project occurs to me, we might do it. Most recently, the kids had a lot of fun cutting cookies into halves and thirds and figuring out how much Baby Carrie should have received after reading "Little House in the Big Woods."

I'm sorry to sound naive, but is it really not possible to take care of flab and extra skin around the belly through a healthy diet and exercise? I am at a good weight after our fifth and final baby, but still do not have the abs I had pre-pregnancy. This summer, I am finally ready to lose the remaining ten pounds or so and get toned again. I had thought it would just be a matter of limiting sweets and starting to have regular work-outs. I haven't thought much about surgery, as it is not the norm in my area (rural New England), and I don't know anyone who has had work done.

I would encourage you to take another look at AAS. I am all about efficiency (and minimizing extra effort and little tiny pieces), with five children ages 8 and under, but have found that AAS is actually the most efficient program for us once I got around to separating all of those cards and putting together the magnets. I'll admit that the set-up was daunting, but honestly it only took 40 minutes or so one evening after I had procrastinated about it for weeks. Spelling Workout was very easy to just give to my first grader to fill out, but I'm not sure how much he learned from it, and I never quite figured out how I was supposed to teach it. I should have been a lot more involved in it than I was. We abandoned Spelling Workout after level A and got AAS instead. AAS is easy for me to teach, easy to teach in short segments, and incredibly effective for my first grader. He prefers to write things rather than use the tiles most of the time, but I do bring out the tiles if it is important for him to see something spelled in tiles (e.g., for segmenting syllables, or showing where the vowels are). Yes, it is Mom-intensive, but our time is well-spent as it is such an efficient and logical way to teach spelling.

I just found some Keen sandals that I love. They are closed-toe, so do not reveal the state of my pedicure -- and so comfortable and supportive. I have been wearing them all spring. I don't think they are "old lady" sandals, and am hoping they have a sort of bohemian/outdoorsy vibe. I got them in Loden. http://www.keenfootwear.com/product/shoes/women/rose-sandal/indian%20teal!neutral%20gray