It's late, so don't expect me to be elegant. But...I'm having second thoughts about using FIAR.
I know, I know, I thought it was for the best. I could do as much or as little as I wanted and tailor it to Moose's needs. It was literature based, and the boy loves to read! It's that tailoring that gets me, though. I know anything worth doing is going to involve work, but FIAR is seeming like a LOT of work. The parent's book gives suggestions, but what I keep hearing over and over is that there's so much you can find for each piece of literature if you look around online. Pinterest and blogs are great, but I'm tired. I don't know if I want to have to hunt around the web to come up with ideas for every single little thing. I have ideas of my own, sure, but I just don't know.
I was attracted for a while to Sonlight P4/5. There were only two drawbacks: the cost and the way the stories were divided into little chunks to be spread across many days. I prefer reading a whole story, or at least a coherent chapter of a story, instead of a snippet that many reviews say doesn't necessarily end at a sensible place. I do, however, think we will be using Sonlight Core A in a year or two.
Moose is only 3. He'll be turning 4 in October. (Forgive me if I'm repeating myself. As I said, it's late, and I'm pretty wiped out.) I hesitate to say he's bright; so many parents do that, and it's become almost meaningless. However, he does learn concepts quickly and easily. He knows his colors, shapes, numbers, letters, most of his letter sounds, and many of the other concepts that seem to be introduced in preschool or kindergarten. He learned all of those through play and daily life. He has great spatial awareness. He's fascinated by clocks and loves calendars. He can do very basic addition and subtraction. He is, dare I say it...bright.
A lady on a Charlotte Mason FB group suggested using My Father's World, specifically the kindergarten curriculum. After reading the sample pages and various reviews online...I love it. I want it. I am as excited by the possibility of using this as I am about using Sonlight Core A for kindergarten. I think Moose would love it, too.
Only two things give me pause: the cost (currently $129 for the basic package or $214 for the deluxe package) and the kindergarten label. How caught up should I be in a label? I hate to push Moose, but I think it would be perfect for him. One possibility would be to begin with MFW this fall, taking it extra slowly--3 days a week, maybe?--for now, and beginning with Sonlight Core A with Grade 1 readers when we finish. Again, going slowly, we would finish both programs over the course of 3 years. This would put him on track to begin first grade coursework "on time," when he would be supposed to enter first grade if he were in public school.
Alternatively, I could try to devise our own plan for this year and begin Core A next year. I have a feeling that I'd be trying to come up with something that looks much like MFW kindergarten on my own, though. Why reinvent the wheel? Just for the sake of not starting with something labelled "kindergarten"? With one infant already and another likely to be joining us in the fall when we open our home for foster care placements, I would really prefer a prepackaged curriculum.
Now if only My Father's World were as inexpensive as Five in a Row. At least I had no problem with ordering the latter, reading through it, and deciding it might not be for us. I hate making these sorts of decisions. I think The Engineer needs to give me a schooling budget for the year, like we have budgets in place for every other category of our spending. That would go a long way toward making me less nervous about ordering something. Maybe I should bring that up to him tomorrow, after his guitar students leave. For now, I'm off to bed. Maybe tonight will be the night Sprite goes back to sleeping for more than 4 hours in a row.
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