Homeschooling Cirriculums???

We use Accelerated Christian Education. My kids love it because it is little booklets instead of one big book. So it makes it easy to travel and do in the car. I never did their Kindergarten curriculum, but it is a large kit with everything you need.

We live in Largo as well, and we go to Homeschool PE classes at the Highland Recreational center. My children have been going for the past 6 years and love it. It has a large range of ages (14 - 5), but they work together quite nicely, and they get quite a work out. The coaches are very creative with different games each week to play. It is affordable as with a rec card, it is only $4 per child. It is on Monday and Wednesday's at 11am to 1pm. Come check it out sometime. Some moms stay and we talk about curriculum and other things. It makes for a great support group. Homeschooling is hard work, but extremely worth the effort and it is good to have others around to help support each other.

I use Abeka for my 5 year old and my 2 year old does the nursery school program they have. LOVE it! Thier phonics are absolutely the best! They have a 4 year old kindergarten and a 5 year old kindergarten. Also they have homeschooling conventions all year where you can go check out the curriculum before you buy. You can buy the kit which includes the lesson plans for the parent. You can also purchase seperately thier music and foreign language programs. they have french and spanish. Good Luck!

We are using A Beka (this is our first year-kindergarten) and I am happy w/ it.
http://www.abeka.com/
HTH!

Check out the free web site program Letter Of The Week at www.lotw.com. She lays out plans and you can tweak it best to how it fits your child.. and it's FREE! I used this with my kids for preschool when they were 2.5 to 4.5 but she has lesson plans and programs for infants through about age 8-10 or so. They have a web site on Yahoo you can join as well to get suggestions and advice. You have to print out and look up your own info when needed but she lays out the information in lesson plans for you. Again, you can tweak it to fit your own needs.

K. B
mom to 5 including triplets

You might check out the curriculum and fun interactive website www.starfall.com. My kids love it! I homeschool my first grader, but even the little brothers ages 3 1/2 and 21 months get a lot out of this one. I enjoyed the Horizon Math K, First Start Reading Program from Memoria Press and using a lot of Dollar Store/Target Dollar Spot workbooks for kindergarten writing practice. BOB books work great to teach reading. BOB books come in many sets of 10-12 tiny paperback books and can be viewed/purchased on Amazon.com. Good for you for considering homeschooling. My daughter is excelling in all academic areas and it works so well for our family. Nurse Midwife Mom of 3

Abeka is a good one, I use Kolbe Home School Academy with my 11 year-old boy because I love that it comes everything ready, course plans, everything you need to do every single day (flexible, you can modify it, though), syllabus, and all the forms in case you need them (report card,attendance, etc.). They have graduations and diploma. They are located in California, you can buy used or new textbooks. It is a religious based curriculum. It is not a virtual home school. I have a 5 year-old little one, and I just use online resources, library resources and my imagination. I also use www.sonlight. com and www.starfall.com. He will be using Kolbe in 2 nd grade.
Actually, you don't need a curriculum totally structured, at 5 years old is easy to find online K curricula, easy to follow and simple. At this age kids don't have a big attention span, so you will need work minutes with him, and that will be fine! Expose him to books, read and read a lot and visit museums, parks and educational places together. he will learn like a sponge from everything!

My friend uses this Curriculum with both of her boys ages 8 and 5. She has been using this since her 8 yr old was in kindergarten. She loves it!

http://www.sonlight.com/

One curriculum provider that has become extremely popular is Sonlight Curriculum. It's perspective is strongly Christian, which in my view might make it a little weak on the sciences (though they do use some hands-on science that my husband and I produce). One of their great strengths is that they provide entire curricula for whole school years, and include all support materials in kits. This is a hit with busy parents, and also with people overseas who might have trouble finding support materials. Here's their liink: www.sonlight.com/

I hope you find just the right thing for your family.