You know you home school when your supplies come in the mail and it is like Christmas!!  I got my Math-u-See manipulatives today and I am so excited! Hmm, I don't know if that's humorous or just plain sad...!  Oh well, I am what I am.

My office is jammed full of stuff from our bedroom right now but as soon as I can get in there, I need to dig out what I've got so I can determine what's left to buy.  I know I should have everything I need for my youngest, who's starting Kindergarten.  Learning is just plain fun at that stage so I don't feel the need for a fancy organized curriculum.  I was only going to do Math-u-See with the oldest (5th grade) since he's so hands-on and I think this will really benefit him, but now that I have the blocks I can see the other two wanting in on this so I may end up getting the 2nd grade books, too. 

I bought the 5th grade LifePac a few weeks ago for Language Arts, but recently I've been reading a lot of posts on a home school forum I'm in that were not kind to it!  I thought it was a fairly popular program but now I'm hearing from lots of folks who tried it and didn't like it at ALL.  I'm hoping that's just them and that it will work for us, because I don't want to be searching for something new at this late date.  Someone described it as "self-teaching" which I'm not sure I know exactly what that means, but if it's something that my son can do lots of on his own, I actually think that will work out better.  We'll see, I guess.  Someone said they used it one year and it didn't end up being up to grade level and they had to repeat a lot to catch up the following year...Hmm.  Maybe I'll go dig it out right now and see for myself!