Mainly the science is seasonal and maybe some of the crafts, but you can always skip to a different season's section if you need to, like if you start in a different season. I always wait until around Labor Day to start anyway, we like to enjoy our summer vacations! :D I just use the books, it seemed too expensive to enroll! I hope you guys end up loving OM as much as we do. :) Hopefully we won't find the social studies to be boring! I do agree that OM is pretty writing intensive, especially from 4th grade on, but I do think it's fine to adapt some for your particular child. If OM says "write two pages" and you think your child would be better served writing one page, you're the boss! :) If you want to have your child type instead of hand write, that's up to you! If sometimes you think it might be better to do things orally, or discuss things instead of writing about them some of the time, you can. Every now and then we do revise things somewhat or substitute somewhat or shorten things somewhat, or sometimes I help her a bit more with a particular assignment and so on. So far it's all worked out beautifully. On the plus side, they do at least make the writing assignments interesting/creative, and they give various choices so that a kid can pick which writing assignment they want to do. And a lot of the other things are projects and crafts and activities that are more hands-on, and they use living books and so on to tie everything in, integrating English and Social Studies and the arts and crafts... I like that about it a lot.

Well, I'm a huge Oak Meadow fan, so that gets my vote- especially if she loves books, crafts, coloring and so on. :)

Yep. One time my daughter was talking to a school friend on the phone and the friend started telling my daughter about this big field trip she was going to miss out on, and I heard my daughter tell her, "We go on field trips all the time." LOL.

This may answer that for you: http://home.comcast.net/~askpauline/hsex/hsexc.html (I've never tried myself. We find plenty for our kids to be involved in without being involved with the public school districts).

There's a difference between choosing not to teach and choosing the appropriate time for YOUR children to do said teaching. *I* don't understand how people can choose to be all amazed or dismayed if some of us don't feel like we have to discuss terrorism with our 8 or 9 year olds. That doesn't mean we aren't 'open' with our kids in ways we see fit. That doesn't mean we will 'neglect' to teach about these things. It simply means that there are issues throughout history that are graphic, horrific, and disturbing and while one child may be ready to process something like that at age 8 or 9, another may not be ready to until they are 12 or 13. That's up to their parents to decide. Only I know what my child is emotionally ready to process and when, and for someone to make a blanket statement about how every 8-10 year old should know this stuff is just odd to me. Those are still pretty young children and not all of them would want or need to know something like that yet.

I used a Graco Turbobooster with my daughter, too, and liked it. It's a little bit cheaper than the one you're looking at (which I'm sure is fine, too).

I agree. The people I thought would be supportive, we told in person. The people I thought might potentially look to debate our choice or interrogate us, I sent an email stating this is what we're going to do, and briefly this is why, and we hope you have your support even if it is not a choice you would personally make. If someone then has a genuine question or two in the interest of understanding or being supportive, by all means, answer it if you want to. But if it seems like they're just looking to prove you wrong, refuse to engage. "This is the choice we've made for our family. It is not up for debate or further discussion." You do NOT have to sit there with your father and his wife as if you were in some sort of conference or school meeting trying to plead your case to them.

Cool! :) I don't know what grade/s you're talking about, but I used Oak Meadow 4 with my daughter last year, we're nearly done with Oak Meadow 5 for this year, and we are looking forward to moving on to Oak Meadow 6 next year. I love Oak Meadow! I had also done several weeks of Oak Meadow Kindergarten with my son early last fall but had to drop it when I realized he wasn't interested enough/focused enough to do ANY sort of curriculum, even one as gentle and sweet as Oak Meadow. But we'll be giving it another try this fall when he's closer to 6 than to 5 and I'm expecting it to go much better this time around. I've got lots of info on Oak Meadow in my blog, if you want to take a peek just click on the link in my signature. The main entries are all basically our day to day homeschooling lives as relaxed homeschoolers using Oak Meadow but if you explore the sidebar to the left you'll find all sorts of other information. Reviews (including an Oak Meadow review), schedule samples (How I took a weekly OM lesson for the various grades and broken it down into daily lessons), and more. Good luck with it, hope you enjoy it as much as we do! :)

Plus there are plenty of other ways/places for her to make friends and be around other kids. My daughter goes to library book club meetings, weekly Judo classes, and still goes to Girl Scouts. Those are the things she does on an ongoing basis. Then there are various temporary things like the homeschool bowling league, swim lessons, art classes and so on. Plus we belong to/organize a homeschool group that has field trips and various get togethers. And she still sees her neighborhood friends and cousins and so on.

Do you live in Pottsville?? That's near where I live (and that's my school district) :D

Yes, you will. Homeschooling is so much fun :) How old is your daughter? You should be prepared for a little bit of initial "school sickness" (you know, like being home sick, but not). My daughter was in third grade when I pulled her out of public school in March of that year. She was thrilled to not have to go back to school, she was thrilled to be homeschooling, but there was still some initial "I miss my friends" mopey kind of stuff going on for a bit- (even though she only ever saw one or two of them outside of school and did have those girl's phone numbers). It did pass though. We've been homeschooling just over two years with no regrets, no looking back, and she says all the time how much more fun homeschooling is than public school was.

Oak Meadow 5 (loved Oak Meadow 4 last year, looking forward to Oak Meadow 6 and Oak Meadow K next). Creative, hands on, interesting discussion and writing assignments, yet not dry or textbookish at all. Teaching Textbooks 5. Will definitely be continuing with TT. My daughter has gained tons of confidence in math, enjoys it, and has done very well with it as per her standardized test scores this year. Frees me up lots, too, which is great, because I don't even like math. Story of the World, Volume 1. We only do this over the summer when we're not busy with our main curriculum, but we always enjoy it when we do it over the summer. This summer will be our third summer working on it. We both enjoy the stories and the various crafts and projects.

I haven't used the online version. It's pricy as I recall! I wouldn't personally want to combine them- Oak Meadow has a philosophy and timeline that I appreciate and I'd want each child to benefit from that instead of being pushed ahead or held back. But the good news is that OM isn't overly time consuming so it won't take you forever to work individually with each child. And your older will soon reach the point of being able to do things here and there at least somewhat independently, and you'd be able to use that time to work with your younger. When we did OM4 we could finish in like 2 1/2 or 3 hours a day- sometimes less. And OM1 should only take like 60-90 min a day I'd think.

Hm I hadn't thought about it. When I was in school, 6th grade was the end of elementary and then we moved on to junior high. Here, the elementary school building goes up to 4th grade and 5th graders move on to "middle school" even though for home education law purposes, elementary level is considered to last through 6th grade. So I hadnt been looking at finishing 5th (which we are this year too) as more special than finishing any other year. Each year we do get the kids a small graduation gift though and will still do that.

I really like TT. If you're interested, I've got a review of it here: http://nancextoo.livejournal.com/124221.html Explains what it's like, what I like about it, shows a few pics, and includes this year's standardized test results for math. :)

I have lots of information about Oak Meadow on my blog. Oak Meadow Review: http://nancextoo.livejournal.com/124071.html Oak Meadow Kindergarten Sample Schedule, With Pics, Which Also Shows How We Used Our Main Lesson Book: http://nancextoo.livejournal.com/125979.html Same As Above, But For 4th Grade: http://nancextoo.livejournal.com/126472.html (We're currently using Oak Meadow for 5th Grade and no longer using a Main Lesson Book approach, we use a binder this year but can holepunch unlined paper as needed to add in photos, drawings, etc, when the project at hand requires more of a main lesson book feel). Here's our 5th grade schedule sample even though you're not there yet, to see how it progresses: http://nancextoo.livejournal.com/126296.html You can find more info on the sidebar to the left, and of course the main part of my blog is just our day to day homeschooling lives using OM. I love OM, looking forward to continuing with it in the years to come.

Oh I know one 4-6 year olds (and even a bit older) might love. Sensory painting- Do "watercolor" type paintings- with Kool Aid. Just mix Kool Aid packets- different flavors/colors- with a bit of water until you have a consistency that you can paint with. The pastel type colors give a water color effect, and it smells REALLY good and can even be "scratched and sniffed" afterward. Fun spring activity. Also my daughter really loved an "art to eat" class she took once- look up simple food art or something and see what things they can create that they can eat at the end. Banana and peanut butter caterpillars, graham cracker firetrucks, pudding "dirt"/plant cups, and so on.

I live in Schuylkill County. I second (or third or whatever we're up to) looking on askpauline to find out what homeschooling like- but know that even though it sounds really overwhelming on the surface it isn't really AS bad as it sounds. There's a thread on the parents' networking board started by pqr asking about the Pittsburgh area and what homeschooling in PA is like and I posted a long response there talking about the PA homeschooling law that you might want to check out. It is a bit of a hassle but once you go through the process once you'll be able to go, "Oh, that wasn't too bad" and it'll seem much easier in subsequent years. I can't tell you where I recommend living- I am not familiar with every place in the county for one, and I have on idea of your price range or the type of place you are looking for for another, or if you're looking to rent or buy or what your situation is. I will tell you that I organize a great homeschool group on meetup.com for Schuylkill County and the surrounding areas, so if you move here and find yourself looking for an inclusive homeschool group that doesn't have a focus on religion whatsoever (although some of its members ARE "religious") and that focuses on field trips, educational tours, fun group learning days here and there, informal playdates, seasonal parties, craft days and so on and so forth, look me up. :) We travel anywhere from 30-90 minutes for great field trips and tours depending on where in the county you are, but there ARE lots of fun things to do in that regard. There are amusement parks, state parks/lakes, cave and mine tours, lots of historical houses and buildings and things of that nature that do tours and field trips, science museums if I travel an hour or so, zoos and wildlife parks if I travel an hour or so, Hershey Park, Hershey Museum, Hershey Gardens and Hershey Zoo (most of which have homeschool day programs here and there), if I travel 1 1/2 hours I can go to Lancaster and there are Amish attractions, there are farms that do tours, I can do a riverboat ride if I want to drive like an hour. We've got movies and bowling and mini golf and rollerskating and indoor playplaces and so on locally. There's places to go maple sugaring, Hawk Mountain always has education programs and hiking trails... Things are not as close as they were when I lived on, say, Long Island in NY but we make do and find plenty to keep us occupied with. :) ETA: Here's that thread I was talking about: http://welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=244145

Not every 8-10 year old is emotionally ready to or needs to hear about things of that nature, things that may just make them fear for their own safety or the safety of their loved ones. I don't focus on scary or depressing things like that with my 10 year old. She does not watch the news most of the time. She knows the bare minimum about 9/11 because of course she hears some things from other people like on 9/11 anniversaries, so we've talked about it a little bit in a very basic way- she was less than a year old when it happened. She has some knowledge of the fact that there are deployed soldiers, because her uncle is one of them and she knows that their job is to keep people safe from people who might want to hurt us, like some bad people did on 9/11. That was the extent of her knowledge up until a few days ago when Bin Laden was killed, and as I was wondering what to say to her about it the next morning, I found out that my wondering was irrelevant as she and her dad had watched the President's speech and discussed it already the night before. So now at 10 1/2 she has some more knowledge than she did before. I think these things come up bits at a time until a child is old enough and emotionally mature enough to hear about these types of things. Eventually they will have the whole picture. Maybe when they're a bit younger, maybe not until they're a teen or whatever. And there is NOTHING wrong with that, and NO reason to traumatize your children more than necessary all in the name of keeping them more informed.

Kind of all of the above? Sometimes they will ask for it and drink it on their own. Sometimes they will ask for chocolate or strawberry milk instead. And sometimes it will occur to me that they hadn't had milk recently and when they ask for juice or something, I'll say I'm going to give them milk this time instead, and they don't complain.

lol- my kids are NOT early risers, really. I'm usually up by 7 at the latest because my teen goes to a special needs school and I get her out the door. My younger two don't usually get up til anywhere between 8 and 9 or sometimes I'm waking them up at closer to 9:30. I love this time of day where it's just me and I've got my coffee, my computer, and... quiet. :) So, I get you!

:iagree: with them.

Thank you for the update!

Our library has all different exercise videos, for kids and adults. My daughter enjoys picking out a different one to do each time- some regular exercise, some yoga, some dance, etc. She also likes putting on music and just dancing around or playing freeze dance or some such. She likes if I get out a stopwatch and see how many of different types of exercises she can do in X amount of time. ETA: Oh, and as others have already mentioned, we do also have a Wii and Wii Fit.