We've been using SOTW without the CD. We've only just finished Chapter 10 of Volume 1 but so far like someone else said it's pretty neutral when it comes to religion, which works for me, since I am a more secular homeschooler. I'm sure others who are Christian could still supplement/converse as desired to round it out to be MORE religious if they wanted it to be.

Good for you!! I skipped that particular activity! LOL.

Neither my husband nor I were homeschooled, but we both had some bad experiences in public school, and we both ended up dropping out in around 10th grade. I since went on to get a GED and then an AOS degree at a business college, and my husband never did get his GED but went on to own his own business, which hasn't made us wealthy but does well enough that I can now be a stay-at-home, homeschooling mom, so I have no complaints about how our lives have turned out! I never thought I'd homeschool- I never thought I wouldn't either, it's just that, I never thought about it at all! My older daughter reached age 18 having always gone through special education and life skills type classes, part of the time in public school, part of the time in private school. My younger daughter started out in public school and attended it for K, 1st grade, 2nd grade and most of 3rd grade. But during that time there were just SO many things I didn't like about her public school experience, that I began to look into homeschooling. I knew of someone who did it and talked to her a bit, began looking online, reading articles and websites and books and so on, and next thing I knew, I found myself talking my husband into it (which did take a little work)... ...and then before I knew it, I was pulling my daughter out of school with only about 2 1/2 months left in her 3rd grade school year. I homeschooled her the rest of 3rd grade, all of 4th, and I'm looking forward to homeschooling her for 5th in the fall, and homeschooling my youngest for K! :)

I agree that OM Pre-K is not necessary (and isn't a real "curriculum" anyway- not that preschoolers need one!). With that said, I absolutely adore OM and can't wait to use OMK this fall with my son, and OM5 with my daughter (who just finished OM4). It's a wonderful curriculum :)

I used Oak Meadow 4 this past year and absolutely loved it. I didn't feel the need to supplement any of the main subjects, I didn't find it disjointed, I didn't think it "wasn't enough" or any such thing- it was a complete curriculum, and of course it was hands-on and creative, which was what I loved about it to begin with! I'm looking forward to doing OM 5 with her in the fall. Yes it's more "gentle" and slower paced in the early years- that's also what I love about it, so I'm still very much looking forward to starting K with my son in the fall. I don't know why you're freaking out :) I know how much you researched this and how much thought you put into it, too!

My livejournal of late has been in regard to my just finished fourth-grader, and my pre-K son. :)

Definitely enough! Don't second guess yourself!!! My son is 4.8 and this past year while his sister did 4th grade, he did no official curriculum. His "preschool" year consisted of: Occasional nature walks and keeping a nature tank where he'd put things he collected into it (leaves, acorns, rocks, pinecones, twigs, a dead yellowjacket once, flowers, shells, etc). He could examine things with a magnifying glass/touch things whenever he wanted. Simple arts and crafts- coloring, painting (fingerpainting, water color painting), gluing, cutting, hole punching, tracing, simple mazes, and so on. Reading- I'd read aloud to him, whatever books he wanted me to. I'd read him poems, too. I ordered him a couple of preschool magazines like "Your Big Backyard" and "Disney and Me." Games- we'd play preschool board games and preschool computer games. TV- we'd watch educational TV shows for preschoolers, and he was welcome to watch the nature type shows I watched with my 4th grader (like Planet Earth, Life and so on). Field trips and outings- we went on many field trips and outings, as a family and with our homeschool group, and he attended most of them with us. We'd have casual conversations about opposites and rhymes and "If you have two crayons and I take a crayon away, how many do you have left?" here and there for fun. We'd practice left and right and days of the week and so on. NONE of these things were on any sort of formal structured schedule. No X number of days per week or X number of minutes per day or any such thing. We just did them when we did them, usually pretty spontaneously for most things. I provided plenty of toys- legos, blocks, pattern blocks, dress up costumes and clothes, a bin full of simple musical instruments, puzzles, a toy kitchen and all the dishes and food that went with it, toy cars and trains, and so on. I'd sign him up for preschool reading and craft programs and other free programs at the library. I'd kick a ball around in the backyard with him, play in the kiddie pool, blow bubbles, look for insects, go for walks, go to the playground. Things like that. I think it was a great preschool year and I have NO regrets whatsoever. I have NEVER thought "maybe he should be doing worksheets or more formal academics or more sit down learning or an official curriculum" or anything like that. In the fall we're going to give a shot to doing Oak Meadow Kindergarten with him- which I love because it's so hands on, creative, story and nature and crafts based, no heavy emphasis on academics- starts out pretty slow paced in the early years- and I'm looking forward to a Kindergarten year that's just a little bit more structured than our preschool year was, but still along a similar vein for the most part- laid back and fun!

I think you can just pay attention to words your kids commonly spell wrong in their writing assignments, and then have them work on those words. So that may mean they work on one word a week, it may mean ten words a week, depending on them. And to review, you can do it in a variety of ways. Some of the ways we reviewed spelling last year were: Chanting the words as we tossed a ball back and forth Making a windsock with streamers and writing the words on the streamers writing them in chalk on the sidewalk or in the dirt with a stick making a small town "map" and naming buildings and streets after the words and then there's the typical alphabetical order/sentences/3X each or whatever, too.

We're doing Oak Meadow K this coming fall. OM gives you weekly lessons, which I then broke down by day. The way I have it planned out, we'll be doing: One to two times per week: Crafts. Crafts will be things like making seasonal tables, making clothespin butterflies, nature silhouettes, pinwheels, leaf prints, shape mobiles, stencils, painting, pine cone critters, window and mirror paintings, popcorn and cranberry garlands, fork weaving, a sand village, tree bark rubbings, wild bird feeders, sock puppets, walnut shell ships and critters, potpourri, flower chains and more. Two times per week: Language Arts (and social studies is tied into this too, though it's mostly via stories and drawings). The LA is starting to learn the upper case letters of the alphabet in hands on ways, like walking its shape on the floor, drawing it in the dirt with a stick, forming it out of clay, drawing it or painting it on paper, looking for it in nature, gathering sticks and making them into certain letters, forming the letter with your body, like with C's, gluing beads into the shape of the letter, as well as a lot of fairy tales, poems, tongue twisters, playing games (like for following directions) and so on. One time per week: Science Science revolves a lot around nature. There are nature stories and crafts and drawings, nature walks, finding bugs and animals, going apple picking, sorting leaves, observing weather and using appropriate adjectives to describe it, learning about different animals via stories and books and visits to zoos, farms and so on, playing games with natural objects, listening to sounds of nature by day and night, watching the stars, learning about different environments via books and pictures (jungle, desert, and so on), doing an indoor garden, seeds, terrariums, checking on puddles various times of the year for freezing and evaporation and so on, finding and examining earthworms, etc. One time per week: Music and Movement Wee sing songs, finger plays, timing and rhythm exercises, spatial orientation exercises, etc. One time per week: Math learning numbers 1-10 similar to the way we will be learning letters, via stories and hands-on activities and crafts and drawings and collages and so on. Each number usually has some association, so like, with 7, you also learn the 7 days of the week. Once you've introduced 1-10 (one number each week) you do counting exercises, fewer/less and more concepts, and various activities and exercises. Each week, they tend to incorporate a lot of what you're doing in one "subject" into another, so "birds" for example might be the theme in language arts, science and crafts in a given week. I don't imagine we'll be spending much more than an hour or so a day on our Kindergarten curriculum and I love how it's less academic and more hands-on/creative and laid back than the formal public school K my daughter got stuck with before I started homeschooling!

We'll be doing Oak Meadow K in the fall. I won't be supplementing with anything else, other than outings and field trips and extra reading aloud for fun.

12, with a cell phone, in a reasonably good neighborhood? Yes, absolutely. And I'm not a "free-range" parent either!

Yep, baseball cupcakes!

You know I can't remember exactly but it was kinda painful the first couple of days, and then some soreness that lasted a while longer. I do remember that there were a couple of times within the first couple of days where it almost felt like I was having another mini gall bladder attack. I heard that's normal, it's due to trapped gas. But I'll tell you, I was really glad I got it done, because the attacks were awful!

It seems to take my daughter a really long time to fall asleep, too. Not so long ago I had my husband look up melatonin online to see what it said about it, as I'd seen a couple of people here mention it. Then he found something in the list of possible side effects that mentioned possibly affecting fertility and that scared me off pretty quickly.

My grandmother lived to be 96- and until very shortly before she died, she was in pretty good shape, both physically and mentally. All the women in my family tend to live pretty long lives!

To me it would have meant as long as he was 14 or under, they'd cover him. But what all the other posters are saying makes sense to me, now, too. I guess they should have been clearer in their wording and said "age 13 and under" or "until their 14th birthday" or some such.

I almost never make my bed. Maybe if company is coming. I don't make my kids do it either. I was never made to do it growing up and still don't really see the point :D Oh, and I brush my teeth AFTER breakfast (as do my kids). I would not want my breakfast food tasting like toothpaste, ick.

My four year old eats stuff like: frozen pancakes or waffles, heated in toaster or microwave (or sometimes french toast sticks) scrambled eggs (sometimes with cheese on a sandwich) instant cream of wheat just cooked in the microwave w/milk (he likes the flavored kinds, like maple brown sugar or brown sugar cinnamon) a bagel with cream cheese, and maybe some fruit cold cereal with milk, sometimes with a banana in it yogurt with fruit and some dry cereal like honey nut cheerios toast with butter and jelly And every now and then we decide that breakfast doesn't really HAVE to be "breakfast" and we'll eat sandwiches or leftovers or something more lunch/dinner-like :)

No, I do not set goals for my children. But I do ask my children periodically what THEIR goals for THEMSELVES are. What do they want to learn? What do they want to do? What do they want to know about? What are they interested in? And then I try to help them explore those things. For instance, toward the end of third grade when I first started homeschooling (not this past school year, but the year before), I asked my then 8 year old daughter what her goals were. She said: Be the world's best kid at giving back massages make jewelry for other people Help people with their problems if I can Be able to go places, like amusement parks, water parks, beaches, hotels and home Learn how to be a tattoo artist Learn how to play sports like soccer and basketball Learn how to make all different foods, like cakes and cookies and cupcakes Learn how to paint houses Learn how to make lotion ("like for people who have face problems") So... I looked up back massage techniques online, went over them with her, and let her practice on her dad and I. I provided her with jewelry making kits and beads and whatnot. I took her on plenty of field trips and outings. I let her go to work sometimes with her dad (who is a tattoo artist and owns his own shop). I signed her up for a week long basketball day camp over that summer. I signed her up for a 4H cooking club, and we made some food together. We didn't paint houses or make lotion- but we did paint other things and made our own scented oil. I asked her what she meant about helping people with their problems, and she said she meant like poor people, and so we did some community-service minded things this year that would help other people. These ranged from raising funds for a children's hospital to donating some belongings to the salvation army to doing an Earth Day park cleanup, and more. More recently, she told me she wants to learn more about photography. We read a Snowflake Bently bio. We made a "day in the life of" photo journal. I make a point of letting her use my camera more often instead of stressing over whether she's going to drop it (so far she hasn't). I'm going to get her her own camera for her next b-day and let her try other things, like time-lapse photo projects and playing with size perception and more. Your kids already have goals. You just need to find out what they are. :)

I chose not to do this. I just bought TT5 for my daughter to use this fall, as she is going into 5th grade. I have read some people say they think TT is "too easy" or "a year behind" and I decided that even if it IS a bit "easy" for her, I was okay with that. It's more important to me that she gain confidence in math than it is that she be challenged in math every step of the way. I'd LOVE for her to think "wow, math is easy!" instead of "Ugh, math is hard!" In my opinion, that will set a good foundation for future years of math all by itself. Just the mere fact of her developing that sort of attitude, that this isn't so hard/bad, it's kind of fun, I CAN do it. Eventually it'll catch up and she'll have completed a whole math curriculum. I'm okay with starting off at a relatively easy, confidence-boosting pace and letting things build gradually from there. But this comes from years of MY thinking that math was hard, and that I wasn't good at math, and being pushed ahead when I wasn't ready all through my childhood. And that attitude continued into MY own adulthood. I joke all the time that I'm lucky I know how many apples I have if I have three apples. The truth is, I hate math. Give me words any day of the week over numbers. And combining that with the fact that my daughter is not overly "mathy" either- for those kids who are more "mathy" and might get bored if they don't feel a bit more challenged, then a different tactic might work better. For me and my child, though, I think this will be best.

My livejournal consists of entries about homeschooling both my 9 y/o and my 4 y/o. It tends to be more about day-to-day stuff with the 9 y/o than the 4 y/o though, overall.

I am going to be using TT for the first time this coming fall. My daughter will be doing TT5. I plan to use it as our sole math curriculum, I don't intend to supplement with anything else (other than maybe math games online or the occasional math operations board game type thing). I have the CD's and the workbook, but I doubt I'll even use the workbook because I have a younger son who will be using the TT program too, and then after he's done, I'm sure I'll resell it, and it will sell better without the workbook being "used." So I'll probably just set up a math notebook and have her write the problems out herself. Then she can watch the lecture, try the problem herself in her math notebook, and then check her answers on the computer.

I don't. If they asked, I'd tell them they did fine. If there were trouble spots, I wouldn't want them to have to worry about it or feel stressed next time testing came up, I'd just make a mental note as to whether I needed to work on anything with them, and then I'd just file it away, submit to the district as required by law, and forget about it.

Do I "plan" a dessert every night? No. Do I "have" on hand a dessert every night that the kids can choose from, i.e. some store-bought treat? Yes. I grew up in a house that had dessert every night. And my children have dessert every night. This may be some cookies and milk, it may be some ice cream, it may be some pudding or jello, it may be an ice pop, if we happen to have cake or cupcakes it may be that, every now and then they ask if they can have some candy instead of something else. If we're having company over for dinner, I'll go to the bakery and get something like a cheese cake or carrot cake or some such (I'm not much of a baker myself)!

lol my 4 1/2 year old does the same thing, but he uses the word "google" as his sister had informed him a while ago that "google" is the highest number someone could think of. So he's always saying things like "I love you google!"