DS(6) will be starting first grade in the fall. I've waffled over whether to go ahead and call him a first grader or not since he turned 6 in January. He would be in kindergarten in brick and mortar this year, first grade next year. Here is my plan: Phonics/Reading: We are working through a mix of Progressive Phonics. Teaching Reading with BOB, Reading Pathways, and Don Potter's Reading Made Easy for First Grade. I expect to be about done with most of these (likely continuing Don Potter's book all year) at which point we will move on to Storytime Treasures and More Storytime Treasures from Memoria Press. Math: Likely Singapore Math 1B/2A with some of Kate Snow's First Grade Math with Confidence thrown in. We might add Beast Academy 2A-2D series toward the end of the year. Handwriting: CHC Handwriting book, Chanie ELA: Introduction to Language Arts by Jack Kris Publishing, All About Spelling Level 1 History: Joining my twins (5th grade next year) for American history with Story of Civilization volume 4 Religion: Image of God First Grade, Great Adventure Bible (continued) Science: I have no idea. Considering Scientific Connections through Inquiry Extras: probably an art class, some sort of sport or PE class, tag along for morning basket with the older kids, likely Memoria Press First Grade Enrichment That looks like a lot typed up. 😛 Fingers crossed we get it all in, but best laid plans, you know...

If you check out the facebook group for Story of Civilization, there are lists of picture books and chapter books to go with each level in the files section. The group is TAN's the story of Civilization Homeschoolers.

freesia, I got the shipment in and kind of peeked through the books. Keep in mind that I ordered Plague! Problem Stories for One version of this: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aLAliQTpTEqN468kRHzjCZf7_qjXunIY/view?usp=sharing So, I had three books: Black Death and Plague Resource Book - this is a book that includes a number of primary sources dealing with the Black Death, including paintings as well as written accounts from the time period. Here is a video of the resource book so you can get an idea of what it's like: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aGGiLwBJ36AafL3m_48Wn6EKdkNi1gqH/view?usp=sharing Plague! Problem Stories for One Problem Log - this is basically the student workbook and is consumable. Plague! Problem Stories for One Parent Book - this it the main book for the unit study. It includes Part 1 Introduction, Part 2 Preparation for running Plague!, Part 3 Lesson Plans to run Plague! and an Appendix with resources to check out for additional supplemental information (such as books to read and websites to check out). In the Lesson Plan section, the pages from the problem log (see above) are duplicated, so if you were willing to copy the pages or let the student read sections out of the parent guide you wouldn't need the problem log for your student. There is a nice sample 3 week schedule for the lesson plans on p. 9 of the book which includes activities to do each day Monday-Friday. Overall, I really like how well put together this is. I would plan on running this with my 3rd grade twins and I think it's feasible with modifications. It's probably more appropriate for a little bit older student (5th-6th would likely be kind of the sweet spot). Also, having all the books now I would say that you could easily get away with just ordering the Parent book. The problem log is nice (especially if you have more than one student that will need to read/copy for like I do with twins) and the resource book is interesting but it's a supplement and not necessary. It is referenced in the Parent book occasionally as an additional resource (ie, not necessary) but the pieces in the book itself aren't really suggested by name. It's more up to you to decide how to assing/fit in the material from the resource book if you want to. Hope that helps.

I literally just ordered this for my rising fourth graders yesterday - we are doing medieval history and coming up on a black plague focused chapter so I thought it might be a fun add on to dive into for a bit. I'm not sure until I get the materials what I'm actually getting though or how doable it will be with my kids. I figured it if wasn't quite right now it might be something good to have for later. I'll try and remember to get on here with a review once I get the materials.

I'd also like to hear a review on Dimensions Evanthe 🙂

Doing a slightly over mid year update - Hits above are all correct 🙂 Yay, we had a pretty good list of hits this year. I think I would add: Mom Made Literature Units to this - we used MP's Lit guides for Little House in the Big Woods and Mr. Popper's Penguins and picked up TpT resources to add to Because of Winn Dixie. All of these have been great and the kids have enjoyed them AND their reading is growing by leaps and bounds this year. Beast Academy - we finished 2A-2D and started 3A. We'll be skipping around a bit from the geometry in 3A to fractions in 3D and then review multiplication again in 3B before going back to work through areas we skipped. The kids still complain when they are asked to think about anything 😛 But I think that Beast Academy is a really great way to reinforce and review the concepts they have already learned in Singapore Math as well as really challenge them. So I'm going to count it as a hit even if the kids might only kind of sort of agree with me (they do like reading the textbook). MP Latina Christiana - I wasn't sure about this when I wrote the last post but I'm moving it to a hit. The kids are actually learning some latin. They are telling me what words mean that they haven't seen before based on their knowledge of latin 😉 And this gets their Dad hands on teaching time with them which is a nice bonus. Misses Writing/Grammar- we DID drop Writing and Rhetoric Fable. My kids just were not feeling it at all. We've incorporated some grammar and writing in with our Literature units, but I'm still kind of floundering on this one. I think after we finish Because of Winn Dixie I'll pull out Write a Super Sentence from Evan Moor and go through that with them. I'd also like to add that choosing to do "latin as grammar" has not really worked this year. I should have picked a grammar curriculum and kept them working in it. I'm planning to use Treasured Conversations this next year.

I'm kind of trying to decide right now whether to just do THE NEXT THING now that we've kind of gotten into a groove or shake it up and do something more fun for fourth grade. Here's the NEXT THING plan: English/Language Arts: Treasured Conversations Assigned novels with TpT units to add additional reading comprehension or grammar activities - Hatchet, Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, Dangerous Journey Pilgrim's Progress (this one from Memoria Press), Robinson Crusoe Building Spelling Skills Grades 3/4 from Evan Moor Considering Winning with Writing if it wouldn't be overkill Math: Singapore 4A/4B Division Facts that Stick Beast Academy 3C,3D, maybe getting into 4A Reflex Math subscription Possibly Everything's Coming Up Fractions History: The Story of Civilization Vol 3 from TAN Press Science: Astronomy with Memoria Press plus 365 Starry Nights, What we see in the stars, 50 things to see with a telescope, the usborne book of the moon, ultimate explorer field guide: night sky and a telescope of course Mystery Science subscription Latin: First Form Latin from Memoria Press Religion (we're Catholic): The Great Adventure Bible for kids Morning Time Enrichment: Typetastic subscription Picture and Music Study from SCM Tin Man Press Start Thinking! Grade 4 Continued Cursive Handwriting practice Memory Work, likely from Memoria press recitation Programming with Scratch Something more fun ideas: Harry Potter units from Build Your Library? Narnia year with Further Up and In?

I'm finishing vpk with my 4 year old son. He is turning 5 in January and we are starting kindergarten work. We did a _lot_ less than I did with his older siblings, now 3rd grade age twins, when they were that age. I'm perfectly happy with this though. This child was not interested in sitting down to do school and I've learned from my older kids to allow for more time to learn some things. So, vpk for us looked like: Farmland Math from timberdoodle and some MEP reception Letter of the week I put together when the twins were little. We read picture books featuring our letter of the week, did handwriting without tears chalkboard and chalk letters and sand tray writing letters, and some coloring pages and tpt printables for out letter each week. Brainquest trivia decks and kumon activity books for coloring, cutting, and gluing That's it. I'm not doing much more for kindergarten honestly. And I'm happy with it.

I was very gung ho to get started with my 4 year old twins when they were this age, and I pushed academics too early. It took time to undo the harm especially to my son who I pushed to write too much too soon. So, I would recommend taking it slow and knowing that with consistency (and no learning differences that need to be taken into consideration) your son will read when he is really ready. Reading is a bit like learning to walk - some walk earlier and others later but they walk regardless. My recommendation is to look at samples and choose what seems best to you. For my 3rd child, a now four year old boy, I have chosen: ivy kids kits memoria press enrichment (used with my twins now 8 ) printing with letter stories from IEW (used with my twins) singapore kindergarten essentials (used with my twins) BOB books (used with my twins, see https://teachingwithbob.com) Progressive Phonics (used with my twins, see http://www.progressivephonics.com ) reading lots of books and Dyslexia Toolkit Level 1 from PDX Reading Specialist (new to me, but I like it a lot. There are similar products on teachers pay teachers that you print yourself and are cheaper). My son is not dyslexic as far as I know, but I wanted a fun, game based reading curriculum that he would find engaging and this has fit that bill. But many of the activities are available from places like this reading mama and others. I wanted something easy this time because I’m just so busy. https://pdxreading.com/product/dyslexia-toolkit/ https://thekoalamom.com/2019/06/dyslexia-reading-curriculum/ Good luck!

Hits: Typetastic Catholic Heritage Curricula Handwriting Year 3 (cursive) Evan Moor Building Spelling Skills Home-made Fairy Tales unit study using If the Wolf Were an Octopus (RFP) and Tales of Wonder (Circe Press) and lots of picture books Daily Mental Math Tin Man Press Start Thinking Grade 3 Singapore Math Story of Civilization Part 2 The Medieval world Scratch (on my own curriculum based partially on the Scratch coding cards) - this is by far their favorite thing we are doing. Misses: Writing and Rhetoric Fable - I had really hoped that this would jumpstart our writing in third grade but it has not worked for us. We are about 3 lessons in and I'm seriously considering jumping ship. The problem is I have no idea what to jump ship to. The Jury is Out: Beast Academy - I really loved 2A-2D, but the kids continue to complain about it. And they absolutely hated the online component - they prefer the practice pages. Memoria Press Latina Christiana - My husband likes it and is teaching it, but the kids vacillate between being excited to do something with Dad and hating the amount of work required to learn a language, especially Latin.

We just took the nwea map test with literally zero prep. They were a grade level ahead and probably would have done better with some prep. If you want to focus on test taking, I think ctc has some books specifically geared toward those skills.

I have boy/girl twins, so my experience is different from same gender twins. My twins are very close, especially since we homeschool, but they are not dependent on each other at all. My girl twin craves alone time from her siblings, especially her twin. They can be competitive about academics, but not overly so. They shared a room until recently when we separated them because my daughter is a light sleeper and was complaining of her brother waking her (he rolls around a lot in his sleep). When they were babies, toddlers, and preschool age they found each other comforting but now they irritate each other like any other two siblings would. Some advice given to me on here that I found helpful was to get 2 different curriculum for them. It's harder to compete and compare. And twins often need different approaches which can include having different curriculum. I don't do this with all of my curriculum but I found it especially helpful when I was teaching them how to read. My daughter thrived with memoria press and my son hated it. He did much better with progressive phonics, bob books, and activities to go along with them. I still use different resources when needed even though they are both reading now.

My 2nd grade twins do: Daily Mental Math level 2 Handwriting from catholic heritage curricula Growing with Grammar 20 minutes silent reading a book of their choice OSMO activities All independently. Everything else we do requires input, teaching, and/or follow through from me.

I feel like we are just now getting into a groove with my 7 year old twins. They will turn 8 July 1 2019 and we will "start" 3rd grade at the end of August, but since we school year round it's more like a technical distinction. In order of my confidence that it is what we will actually attempt to do: Math: Singapore Math 3A/3B Beast Academy 3A-3D with online subscription Daily Mental Math Grade 3 Additional materials to drill multiplication facts likely (already purchased some from TPT) History: The Story of Civilization Volume 2 TAN Press The Story of the World Volume 2 Peace Hill Press Famous Figures of Medieval and Renaissance Times additional picture books, chapter books, and videos from the activity guides and Guest Hollow Science: Zoo Homeschool class Mystery Science Morning Time: Brain Quest Trivia cards / Melissa and Doug Smarty Pants trivia cards Memoria Press Recitation Plans 3rd Grade Units to cover in the year in 9 week increments: Fairy Tales, Shakespeare, New Testament, US Geography STEM: Scratch Coding Cards EEME subscription box OSMO Religion: Image of God Grade 3 At the feet of Mary: A Hands on Resource from Catholic Heritage Curricula Language Arts (SO TORN): Memoria Press Literature Guides for Grade 2, start Grade 3 (we are about a half a year behind on these, building fluency and confidence) Catholic Heritage Curricula Handwriting Grade 3 (cursive) A spelling curriculum (we will have finished AAS Levels 1, 2 - I am torn about going on to do 3 or jumping ship for something new) Grammar - either continue Growing with Grammar Level 3 OR Start Latin with Latina Christiana from Memoria Press and let latin be our grammar for the year Outside Classes: Zoo Homeschool Class ( 1x / monthly) Art Class (weekly) Homeschool PE (weekly) maybe add a co-op (weekly) - unsure if I can manage all of the above plus working 30 hours a week and fit in a co-op 😅

I can't speak from experience, but I would probably drop everything except reading and math in your situation. Involve your boys in packing and moving as much as possible - this is a life skill that they are learning since most of us will move a few times in our lives 😊 And maybe decide to make up some school time by schooling through the summer after you settle in. Welcome to Arkansas! I grew up there, in the river valley, and graduated from the U of A in Fayetteville. If you enjoy hiking there are many varied opportunities for outdoor adventures. I wish I had appreciated it more before I moved away. I hope you enjoy living there.

Sorry to hear that you are also feeling yucky with your pregnancy... my 2 year old (#3) is still napping in the afternoons, thank God. I used to use this time to do extra school work and now I just sleep. :mellow:

This year has been difficult for me - I got pregnant with baby #4 in August right before school started. I thought at the time that this was clever timing because it meant the baby would be due late April/early May... a great time for a break, I thought! But ugh... this pregnancy has been my hardest so far, lots of nausea and exhaustion, migraines... just general yuckiness that is making school really hard for me to get done. I've cut back a lot of the extras I had planned because I just haven't felt up to the extra planning it would take to pull them together. So...hits and misses.... HITS: Singapore 1A and Addition Facts that Stick / Subtraction Facts that Stick - math has been going well. We did Singapore for Kindergarten, and if anything 1A feels too easy. But I'm willing to work through it anyway for the reinforcement of concepts that we touched on last year. I was originally hopeful that we would finish 1B and go on into 2A this year but now I'll just be happy to finish 1B. See above. Beautiful Feet Books Early American History Primary - although I've cut a lot of the "notebooking" from this curriculum and we're mostly just reading aloud and using the discussion questions, it's been a hit. My kids are learning it and enjoying it. ELTL1 - this has been great. My kids love the literature selections, and they are getting to hear Aesop's Fables. The copywork and gentle grammar introductions are just right and I'm seeing improvement in handwriting from this alone. Memoria Press Enrichment - We don't always get to it but I enjoy it and so do my kids. The memory work is something we always do and it's been really great. I like the picture book selections and art cards. Neutral - Royal Fireworks Press Aesop's Fables: Books about Reading, Writing, and Thinking - I made a master list of the fables in these books and matched them up with ELTL1 so that I could pull them in instead of just reading the fable from ELTL on the weeks they matched up (yes, I did that way before the pregnancy happened). We've done a few and some of the tasks are just above my children with their so far limited exposure to grammar. They do like some of the ones we've done. Misses - Science - I just haven't gotten around to it. It keeps getting shoved on to the back burner for "another day" that rarely comes. :/

I struggle with this as well. We DO have a playset - a simple one with a slide and swings and a little monkey bars - and the kids rarely use anything except the swings. The swings get used for about 20 minutes a day. So I would recommend instead of buying a full on playset, just get a swing set. You can even build your own fairly cheaply: http://www.hgtv.com/design/make-and-celebrate/handmade/how-to-build-a-wooden-kids-swing-set After the swings, the thing that gets used most is the sandbox. I don't like the mess of the sit down in it type sandbox so I got one that they stand up at: https://www.walmart.com/ip/Step2-Naturally-Playful-Sand-and-Water-Activity-Table-Value-Bundle-8-piece-Accessory-Set/10983986 This plus some sand toys and mini bull dozers and army men gives me a lot of outdoor play time. The next most useful things would be chalk, a water table, a rubber playground type ball. We have a mini trampoline and a balance beam that we made ourselves. These get used very occasionally, more when friends are over. I'm considering a life size jenga set next. :D

I used Guest Hollow's anatomy for PreK-2nd grade when my twins were 4 years old. We had a great year doing this curriculum - you can pick and choose among the resources. Guest hollow also has a step up in age curriculum called Jr. Anatomy that you may want to look at, but here is the PreK-2: http://www.guesthollow.com/homeschool/science/anatomy_little_otters/littleotters_anatomy.html

It's been on my amazon shopping list for awhile but I have yet to pull the trigger.

Last year, I budgeted $1000 per child (2 kids). I bought quite a few things I didn't even use, but some of that was getting math manipulative that will be useful for little brother in a few years. This year I budgeted $1000 total ($500 per kid).

I find this thread slightly depressing :/ I know that comparing my kids to others is a road I do not want to walk down, and I usually succeed at that. But for some reason this thread has me second guessing everything I have done with my twins. My twins will be 6 in a week. A year ago, right before and around turning 5 they were zooming through BOB books set 1. But not "level 1 readers." I would say right now they can handle those, in a sense... they are reading elephant and piggie, but some level 1 readers are still beyond them since they contain so many words that are not easy to sound out phonetically.

I home schooled my kindergarten age twins this last year. I got a lot of the advice you see in this thread last year when I asked almost the exact same question. :) It was good advice. I imagined that I could teach them everything together, but it really does help to split them up for some subjects - for us, reading and math. They do occasionally do reading or math together, too, it just depends on your curriculum. For example, some days we play games for math and those days we play the games together. Some days we read through books for math - like when we were learning how to tell time on an analog clock and I got a bunch of time books from the library - and we do those together. But I have found it easier to separate them when doing new concepts so that competitiveness doesn't come into play. As for what to do with one twin while the other is working - I tend to use learning apps. We have an ipad so I'll have one twin work with me while the other does 20 minutes of Osmo or dreambox or dragonbox numbers or teach your monster to read. Then I swap and the other one does instruction while twin A does ipad. We don't do this every day - sometimes I just let one play while the other works, but I find it is helpful a lot of the time.

I'll second the all about reading pre-reading. You can skip the suggested crafts if you want to (I did sometimes). I did MEP reception for math with my twins this year in the fall semester but it would have been a great program for them to have done for their 4 year old year. It's free other than the cost to print it and very easy to do. They include little games and crafts occasionally as well and I skipped them as well, though I would recommend getting a copy of Denise Gaskin's book Math you can play that combines her Counting and Number Bonds book and Addition and Subtraction book. Pull a game out of this book to play for math some days and you'll be surprised how much they can learn from just playing these games. I used IEW's Printing with Letter Stories for handwriting and liked it this year for Kindergarten. If you think he's not quite ready for a full handwriting curriculum, Handwriting without Tears has some great tools in their Pre-K curriculum section. I used their chalkboard, little chalk bits, and sponges to help start teaching letter formation to my kids when they were 3.5-4. I also had the "my first school" book they sell for PreK but never used it. Kumon makes a lot of workbooks for letters and numbers too. Catholic Heritage Curricula has some nice materials for us Catholics. I really like their Who Am I? religion series listed at that link - we used it this last year. I've also really liked the Making Music Praying Twice set, though it is a bit pricey and you'll want to be able to play CDs and either copy the music to hand out or pull it up on your tv / computer monitor / in home projector. (You can most likely hook your laptop to the tv with either a VGA cable or HDMI cable, depending on the laptop and the tv inputs). I didn't use their letter sounds / shapes, etc. material though and cannot comment on them.

I'm still considering ordering a test to use so thank you for your input. :)