Mine learned print first, but once we moved to cursive I made them practice their signature over and over as soon as they knew the individual letters. I think when they are first learning to write it doesn't matter (unless there's going to be a place they will be required to print their name without you being there--but I think most classes/coops don't care how the child writes their name). I do, however, see reason to be able to both print and write their name (many legal forms require both), so whether my kids write completely in cursive or completely in print, I'll ensure they can do their name both ways at least by the time they are of legal age. (On a funny note, there was a passage as you began the...SAT? ACT? I took both, so I don't remember...that required you to attest that you were who you said you were and would do all the work yourself and take the test honestly, etc. You were supposed to write the whole thing out in cursive and sign underneath. My brother came out of there saying, "I couldn't remember how to write in cursive, so I just wrote as messily as I could. Hopefully they can't tell!" His "signature" is just his name printed hastily/sloppily, not truly cursive.)

I feel your pain. In our house, I was the one reluctant to try meds. DH has ADHD and was on meds from about first grade until some time in high school, when he learned enough about his strengths and weaknesses to compensate and do well without the meds, so he was enthusiastic about trying them for our oldest. (Before then he was really struggling to get his schoolwork done and getting negative feedback because of it, so the meds really boosted his confidence and helped his performance.) I gave in this spring because poor ODS was taking longer and longer and getting less and less done, and I felt awful about schooling taking so much time (JUST math and one aspect of lang. arts each day took 2-3 hours, and his sister finished the same work in 30-45 minutes) and me having to constantly be on his case. We were both (all) getting frustrated. I used RightStart, and the conceptual foundation was excellent. The games were great, too, since they were interactive--until DD got too competitive and I had to find ways to turn all the games into Solitaire-style, at which point ODS couldn't focus anymore. (I moved him to Beast Academy because he wanted more of a challenge--but without meds, even that curric would have taken forever.) As for trouble retaining things--you could try giving options for fun review. My kids LOVE Prodigy (a free, online math-based RPG that naturally cycles through a whole host of topics and adjusts difficulty to each student), and there are lots of other free games to drill various skills. In addition, RightStart has its card games book that you could use to cover pretty much any topic together, and of course there are the daily-review worksheets like folks above mentioned. If it was built into her schedule (and if she had choices), the review wouldn't seem demeaning (not quite the right word) and might even be an enjoyable way of avoiding frustration by keeping the concepts all fresh in her mind.

Nooo! This looks so cool, but I guess I'm too late because it doesn't give me a chance to order! Noooooooo!

Very little--I tend to overanalyze every post (of mine) and try to determine my motivations for posting, the likely perception of those viewing/reading, the potential consequences... When I do post, it's usually pics of family get-togethers or occasional "here's a few pics of our lives from the past 3 months" for those far away. My oldest brother lives far away, and the rest of my family ended up moving where we are piecemeal from a different area 1000 miles away, so there are lots of friends and relatives we see once a year if that. This is the story of my social life in general, though--I sit on the sidelines and mostly keep my mouth shut because I'm too busy agonizing over what I might say or what I already have said. Sigh.

I feel like I am a curriculum junkie when it comes to math and language arts. (I'm currently housing Jackie's IEW DVDs--which I hadn't purchased on my own because they're painfully expensive, which I am/will be using elements of in a convoluted combination with some BW, MCT, and Killgallon for the next year, at least.) Most of the other subjects I just can't justify the cost at this point; I can give a decent overview of history and science for this age (though I did buy BFSU as a guide) just through my own blundering through encyclopedias plus extra resources I scrounge up. That said... I don't own any of the monstrously large, cumbersome, and expensive curricula like Sonlight. My sister has one of the cores, and while I looked at it and wanted to be jealous, it just looked too...big. Too many elements to keep up with, keep track of, coordinate...and that enormous binder! I don't own LoF. The concept appeals to me, but I tried to tempt my kids with the sample chapters online and they thought it was weird. Maybe that would be different now, since they last looked at them something like two years ago. Then again, the last thing I really need is another option for math. Or do I... If I had more funds, I think I would own vastly more. I see elements in a lot of programs that I like, but very few entire programs work for us--I'm always tweaking things or supplementing or alternating. I, too, have dreams of the home library with multiple levels, a spiral stair to the balcony, and rolling ladders. :drool5: As it is, I spend as much as I feel I can justify...and as much as I can squeeze out of my budget.

Okay, I'll give it a go this round... ODS (7) has really honed in on his passions this year, so his priorities would be math, geography, guitar/music, and running/biking. With that in mind: - Continue to let him move at his pace in math, encouraging his progress while watching for burnout. - Help him expand his geography knowledge in a way that interests him. I can't think of any way in which recognizing all the countries of the world by shape is going to help him, so I'd like to find another aspect of world geography that grabs him. He's already got our regional street map memorized... Maybe landforms? Geocaching? Hmm... - Try to feed his passion for more and more guitar, and find some ensemble opportunities now that he's been moved to private lessons. (The instructor mentioned a Christmas ensemble he could do next year, but I'd love to find something before then, since that seems so far away and he misses playing with others.) Continue in choir. (See about moving him up to the next choir, which does the harmonizing he so desperately wants?) Encourage his self-teaching of piano. - Encourage his delight in biking and running, since the exercise is good for him in more ways than one. Perhaps force a bit more fine motor, like shoe tying (!). - Finish developing that R sound! And since insurance is giving us a hard time, I guess we try this on our own. ($95/half-hour of speech is too much for me!) DD (nearly-6) has always been a bit of a mystery. She is afraid of failure, but she when she attacks something she settles for "done" rather than striving for excellence. Based on her interests/personality, I guess my goals will be the following: - Provide her as much freedom as possible and see where she goes, hoping to see her excited/self-motivated about some particular academic area. (This terrifies me, but she's far enough ahead that we don't NEED to accomplish anything, and I fear squelching her love of learning with my desire to actually make forward progress.) - Encourage her sudden passion for all things creative by profusely complimenting her more careful drawings and pointing out the good points of her storytelling. She has potential in both areas, if she takes the time to put in effort. - Work on reducing her competitive streak and/or handling difficulty with grace. She avoids anything she deems hard, and I'd like her to eventually move past that and see that doing hard things can be really satisfying, and that she doesn't always have to be first/best/most to be happy. (Why does the first/best/most not come out in her academics except when comparing herself to her brother!?) - Determine whether she's most passionate about dance, gymnastics, or soccer, since we don't have the money or time to pursue all three. She's good at all of these, and she's willing to put in effort to succeed, so this could help with the above. For that matter, determine where her passions lie overall on extracurriculars. She's trying choir this spring and she wants to do violin. We can't do everything; I'd prefer to have something athletic and something musical, but we'll see. If she continues to dabble in piano she can fulfill the musical side on her own as her brother does with the athletic piece. YDS (3.5) is my most challenging child. I'm keeping it pretty simple with him: - Work on independence (not needing Mommy to watch him/hold his hand/help him to get dressed, go potty, etc). Perhaps expand this to an attempt to reduce his general level of anxiety about life. Since every doc I've ever seen simply points to his size/growth and says he's perfectly fine, I'm trying to figure out how to do this on my own. - Expand his diet beyond peanut butter toast, preferably without having to hear him scream. - Get him back to sleeping through the night...or at least not waking hourly. (One can hope...) - Follow his lead academically, hopefully moving beyond sounding out individual words to really reading, developing a better number concept beyond ten, and working on fine motor so we can eventually transition to standard handwriting rather than creatively-formed letters. Everyone needs work on emotional regulation/response to frustration, and I'm making a hard push this academic year to make friends by attending every homeschool event we can manage and getting my own rear out the door for the monthly Mom's Night Out events to connect with the moms of the kids I see my kids playing with. (Lots of work for this introvert!) I also want the older two to become stronger swimmers and the youngest to...well, realistically, just to be okay with getting wet up to his chin. A backfloat would be nothing short of a miracle, but that would be wonderful.

We went through Bible Heroes last year. I wanted to take a little break from IEW; MCT looked so glorious that we've been doing Island this year. We're enjoying it, and it's given us a more writing-light fall, which I think we needed. I plan to alternate the two (with some extra thrown in!) since I think they give different strategies for writing (and of course MCT has much more). IEW has some good formulas to follow to get good at writing conventions and try out some basic styles (more drill), while MCT's writing is more conceptual (probably more high-level thinking than IEW, IMHO). I see the worth in both.

RS-A drove me nuts on that front, too. I would read about three or four lessons at a time, just looking at one of the topics, and then teach that one topic in one sitting before moving on to another topic. But I can see why you might not want to do that. I adored level B, though. It had some review at the beginning of every lesson (which I just skipped unless I thought they needed it), but overall it seemed way more coherent and it gave my kids an awesome foundational understanding of math. ODS is a natural with numbers, but DD strikes me as more like me--a solid student, but not brilliant at math or anything--and yet she's more comfortable manipulating difficult problems into simpler ones than I am sometimes, coming up with ways of thinking of things that I wouldn't have considered--because I was merely taught to attack the problem as-is and not taught to ponder what I already know and how that can help me to figure out something new or difficult. But no program is perfect for everyone, so if you think B would drive you equally nuts, find something that will get done without giving you a migraine. :-)

My answer depends on the kid. For my oldest, I used RS 2nd ed. A-C...but he made it through C in just a couple months because there was so little new material. For him--since math is intuitive--I think I could have easily gone straight from RS-B to BA3 and he would have figured out anything he needed to know as he went along. With my second, I only made it halfway through C. I don't know if she was too busy comparing herself to her brother or if she was just done with RS games and wanted a clear progress bar/finish to her work, but I felt it was necessary to pull the plug for her. She wasn't ready for the challenge of BA, so I moved her to SM2A. I could have easily moved her straight to 3A even without finishing RS-C, since she zipped through SM2 A and B in a few months with no difficulty at all (the only thing that took any effort was making sure she understood multi-digit subtraction), but I wanted to rebuild her confidence. Now that she's into SM3A there's finally some new material.

Has he read anything by Nancy Farmer? My favorite of hers was House of the Scorpion--so much so that I still re-read it every few years. Peak by Roland Smith is also really awesome--a lot of former students read and loved it. It's about a boy whose dad wants him to be the youngest to scale Everest. If you want to keep him busy for a while he might like the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan. They got my DH hooked in high school, and I just read them a couple years ago.

For very early chapter books, I found Clifford chapter books (but he may be a little young for yours...), Ling and Ting, Amelia Bedelia treasuries, Frog and Toad... For some that are more on-level with Magic Treehouse, there's A to Z Mysteries and Calendar Mysteries by Ron Roy (got both my olders really hooked). The Stories Julian Tells and related books were good. Boxcar Children are on a 3rd grade level, once your kids are able to stomach a longer chapter book. I found that my kids were (DD is still) very sensitive to text size and white space, so books like My Father's Dragon were easy enough but too visually busy for them to feel able to handle.

I'm in pretty much the same position--working through AAS 3 and thinking we don't need it this teacher-intense forever because my kids pick it up easily (and I need a place to cut back with my 3 yo nearing a place where he will need attentive instruction). I've got my sights on Rod & Staff's spelling workbooks for my daughter, since folks report that they use the same rules as AAS and have good, thoughtful exercises. For my ODS, though, I plan to transition to How To Teach Spelling, which is basically AAS simplified. He doesn't need the AAS intensity but benefits from having me walk him through it so it gets done in a timely manner. (He has ADHD, so workbooks can take forever.)

What about a winter-themed craft: a wooden or foam snowman to dress or a Christmas ornament to decorate? A relay race where you have kids tow each other on snow shovels? (Can you find them here? We brought one down when we moved, since it's also handy for leaves!) A winter gear relay where each kid has to put on an inordinate number of outdoor-wear items before stumbling to the other side to pass it all off to a teammate (snow pants, coat, huge boots, mittens, silly hat, scarf...). And yes, never underestimate the delight of some free time to top things off.

We have a cheapie little Phillips GoGear Mix player. I think we got it for something like $20 about a year-and-a-half ago, and it's used for a couple hours each night to play music in YDS's room from when I tuck him in until when I remember to go back in and turn it off. It's great because you can organize music by album/folder and select specific songs if you choose (so better than the pure luck-of-the-draw playlist MP3 players with no display), but all it does is plug into headphones or a speaker and play what you've uploaded. I couldn't find it in a fast search of a couple buying sites, but the picture from the Phillips website came up when I searched Google, so at least you can go to their site and see if it looks like what you want.

My oldest just started classical guitar lessons this summer. His studio (specializes in guitar) recommended a Cordoba Protege. They said it's a good sound at a low price point--great for beginners. We were told to get a 1/4 size, which they said is the right size for most young beginners (though this studio/method starts kids at 5--and they did say that some smaller kids need something a little smaller to start) and would likely last my son a year or so based on his current size. He's about 4'2".

I don't single out academics, and we're still working on understanding the concept of bragging right now. For us it was coming out over ODS's guitar lesson, and I've tried to explain the difference between being proud of what you've accomplished and simply trying to inform others that you think you're awesome. So I'm fine with saying, "I can play this song now! I was the first one to learn it!" but not so much with, "I'm really awesome at guitar. I'm way better than the other kids in my group!" One is stating an accomplishment, the other is making a comparison which casts others in a negative light. (We've also discussed that sharing your accomplishments should not take up an entire, one-sided conversation, as other people likely have things they would like to share, too.) For that same reason, I don't like grade-leveling. If you state that you learned your times tables, that's an accomplishment; if you state that you're in kindergarten and are working on 3rd grade math, that's designed to show how you favorably compare with others your age. I'd rather my kids be proud of what they can do, not of how they compare to others. Does that make sense? Is there really a distiction to be made here, or am I nuts?

DS has been asking what the numbers mean on his books, but I've just told him that those are the levels. You start with level one books and keep going. So he doesn't realize that they're corresponding to grade levels. Thankfully all our books just have a number (or like BA, number/letter combo)--no "grade" attached to the label. DD, I think, has an inkling. I call her K, since that's what she'd be by age. In September we tried out the library's new K-2 homeschool program. The librarian wanted the kids to partner up and pick one of the Elephant and Piggie books available, practice partner reading, and then perform the book for the group. The whole business was an ill-planned fiasco (the same five books read three times each...in a mumble...with no pictures for the audience to look at...and half the kids needing moms off to the side prompting or just feeding them the words). At any rate, DD turned to me about halfway through, eyes wide, and said in a horrified stage-whisper, "Mom! I think some of these kids CAN'T READ!" Shortly after that she started a new year of Sunday School, where she's been bumped up to the 1st/2nd grade group because she's the only K-er who shows up for Sunday School. The teachers were apparently vocally impressed that she knew how to read, since it was notable enough to her that she reported it later. At any rate, it leaves me with a bad taste when kids are announcing to others, "I'm reading at THIS grade level!" so very smugly, so I'm trying to keep my kids from that sort of thing. I'd rather stick with, "I love X type of books!" or "Multiplication is my favorite part of math!" ODS is bad enough with guitar, where his teacher just moved him to private lessons, telling him, "You're just moving waaaay faster than any of my other students!" We've been working on appropriate pride/appropriate humility, but it's not an easy road. I try to make him focus on his time spent practicing and the improvement he's made, rather than the fact that he's left his peers in the dust. I think it'll help now that he's on his own and has no one to compare himself to (and no other parents oohing and aahing over him every lesson). I'm half-tempted to stick him back in soccer, where he did not excel...but he didn't really notice that he was one of the worst on the team, so that might backfire. So far DD just compares herself to her brother and despairs because he's faster at mental math...so no worries about her for now. Syllieann, I think I may steal your line about the development and use of their gifts that they can be proud of.

School House Rock! They have fun songs on all kinds of topics (parts of speech, the Constitution...) but their skip-counting are actually intended to be for kids learning multiplication, and they're available on YouTube. Just search YouTube for "schoolhouse rock multiplication" and you'll have 'em all!

I'm with SeaConquest. Once my kids started reading, we gave them a reading lamp and said, "You can go to bed at the regular time OR you can stay up an extra fifteen minutes to read." (And now it's more like an hour--so as they aged we've still put them in their rooms at the same time, but they can stay up later because we let them read longer. It's worked well because DH and I still have that evening time even with kids getting older, it shows the value we place on reading, it gets the kids in the habit of setting aside time for reading daily as DH and I do, and it's built their stamina for reading alone since we've gradually increased their allowed reading time as they gained skill and gotten older.) During that time, they have to be something related to reading, but they can pick their material and do what they will with it. Sometimes they just flip through and look at pictures in a magazine, sometimes they pull out a pile of picture books they loved when they were three, sometimes they read the first two pages in fourteen different books and decide not to continue with any of them. (That would be DD--drives me nuts.) They NEVER read a book if I say, "Oh, this one is really good--I think you'd like it!" I've learned to phrase it as, "Well, you liked __, and this is similar, so you may enjoy it as well," or "Lots of people think that this one is pretty funny, if you're looking for something funny to read." Make several suggestions along with reasons the child might be interested, but leave it up to them. As with some of the PPs, my kids prefer doing most of their reading below their level. Yes, they may be able to read at X grade level, but that's their top output, so that takes effort. It's far more fun if you're not spending so much time sounding out words, figuring out meanings, etc. Reading below their top level isn't a bad thing--it builds fluency, allows them to focus on comprehension and storytelling elements, and lets them lose themselves in the book. You might have one "working level" book which you spend a bit of time reading together, but don't force it, since that's more likely to backfire and kill the love of reading. (Frankly, would YOU want most of your reading to be at the top of your capability?) My kids cycle through reading like anything else. For a while they will be thoroughly obsessed with a book or series, hauling it along in the car or reading at the breakfast table...and then it's like nothing grabs them for a while, and I despair of their ever becoming passionate about reading. And the cycle repeats. Hopefully the love will grow as they do, but even if they don't become bibliophiles like DH and I, I at least see hope for them enjoying reading on a regular basis.

All my kids adored the glider swing on our swingset as a transition between the baby swing and the big-kid swings. It's pretty safe, and they use their hands and feet to make themselves move--like a bridge to learning to pump. My older two figured it out pretty early, but my youngest just got into it right around his third birthday. Our metal swingset had a wider glider swing that two kids could do side-by-side or one kid could straddle; our current, wooden swingset has a glider where two kids can ride back-to-back...in case you are thinking also of that "future playmate" you mentioned who might like to ride along in a few years. I made a little jungle gym out of PVC when my older two were about 2 and 3, and they loved hanging on it, climbing on it, using it as a fort, etc. Our other big gross-motor winner for 3 yos is definitely the trike. Cozy Coupe might be great depending on your kid's size, but my youngest was almost hitting his head on the top of Grandma's by 2.5. Someone gave us an old trike with a back seat that he loves to drive around. The older kids liked our Radio Flyer Folding Trike, which has a little "trunk" for carrying treasures--but it's technically for ages 1.5-3 (none of mine could pedal until 2.5!) and was a bit small for our purposes, so we passed it on to a more petite cousin when we were given the bigger trike. When I was little we had a pedal tractor with a trailer that was awesome.

My kids loved Ron Roy's A to Z Mysteries--a nice, long series to keep going on for a while. (Right now I love series, otherwise I feel like I'm constantly trying to help them find something they want to read.) The Littles is another series that's about that same reading level. I think of Boxcar Children as being a step harder--though some of that may be purely due to length. In the same difficulty vein as Boxcar Children would be Trumpet of the Swan and The Mouse and the Motorcycle, which are more animal-centric. DD is my Boxcar Children reader, while DS has been enthralled with EB White's animals. One I haven't had in-hand yet... My daughter spotted a series in the Usborne catalogue called Fairy Ponies. I found her an excerpt online, and she liked it. I was pleasantly surprised that it seemed decently written, not like some of the ridiculous girly books out there. That looks to be about 3rd grade reading level, as well, and you can find them on Amazon. Usborne lists the first book as 780L. I'm considering... I laugh, though, that this series combines fairies, ponies, and royalty--three major themes many girls seem to love.

I use it as a stand-alone for my oldest, but I'm planning on easing my second child into it by doing BA once a week or so along with Singapore once she starts level 3. If your child loves math and enjoys a challenge, this will be great. It is definitely HARD math, though (especially that first chapter of 3A!). All of the problems involve some level of deep thought, many of them require you to deduce multiple steps, and the guide books show you lots of really cool tricks to figure out hard problems, but you have to be able to do the mental gymnastics to understand them. This is not to discourage you--because I think the books are super cute and really awesome--just to warn you that it won't be fun, "light" math if that's what you were hoping for.

Thanks for all the replies--this has been super helpful. My oldest loves numbers and data and precision, so I think he'd get a kick out of a watch (especially if it had a second hand), and my daughter keeps asking if she's going to get one (though she may view it more as jewelry)...so maybe I'll give it a shot. Timex has some pretty durable-sounding watches on Amazon for under $20, and it sounds like several of you had good luck with them. Thanks again!

Should I have made this poll not public? I thought maybe if I didn't check that box, no one would be able to see the results but me... Maybe I'm wrong, though...

My older kids are in elementary school, and I thought I'd get them each a watch for Christmas...but my mom said it would be a waste of money because she doesn't know any kids who wear watches. I wear a watch, if it makes a difference. At any rate, I thought I'd poll the hive: is a watch a useful gift for a kid in the early elementary years, or have you had watches languishing at your house? Thanks for your input!