I have tried neither. But LOE calls to me more. Less fiddly. And less levels. So cheaper in the long run. I have watched pretty much all of the logic of English videos. There is a really review of the essentials program on her site.
LOE essentials does cover grammar. That is why I have considered it as a program to grow with.

Thank you so much for joining us here! TMT asked some great questions. I don't think I have any right now. I just wanted to mention that my son (4)  was playing Kodeable tonight and he loves it. I was shocked at how intuitive it was for him and he hit the ground running with it, flying through the first few training levels. We have tried a few other programs that have been more open ended, which left us both scratching our heads. Thank you.

Skip counting is one way to do multiplication on the RS abacus.
Another way is to use the rows  If the question is 7x5 you slide cross 7 beads on 5 rows. And count the total.
I remember looking it up a few years ago. I can't recall how to do it beyond that. And it limits one to 100 beads.

I am sure the soroban way is different.

It was a while back and from what I remember, I did like it. But there wasn't that much that made it possible to implement. And it really was a public school policy book in the end rather than raising a child, home education book.

I think the majority of these apps are for 2-3 year olds. My sons first apps at 2 were preschool prep apps.

I am just not so convinced that this is the case. Or at the least not nearly as universal as one might think.
If only  you could see how the children in my school district are graded. They could write an appaling essay with bad spelling, bad grammar and a lack of punctuation and pass if they wrote something creative enough.
Math is likewise. Doesn't matter if the answer is wrong. They get half points for creative effort.
And the assignments are just brimming with effort to instill creativity.

First I want to say I was a little concerned as to what your post was going to be. I thought you were going to be one of those early learning, nay Sayers that wished to bash early learning because there are no proven benefits or something like that. Instead I was quite piqued by your question.

First I will say my husband and I are "poor" we are a low income, single income family of 3. And we are very happy. We have been blessed to live in a town affordable enough that we can own our tiny home for less than the price of rent. Sometimes I yearn for more.. But we live frugally, make the best choices we can and save what we can to enjoy the little splurges. I did many of the things you did. We cloth diapered and breastfed. I buy my son gifts from second hand stores. And I seldom pay full price for anything.
Neither my husband or I are career driven, money yearning types of people. For us the joy comes from raising a family and enjoying the simple life we have.

So why do I do early learning with my son? First why not? we can and we do. But more seriously... I think there are a lot of reasons. And these come in no particular order. I am sure there are more.
I want my son to have an advantage with school. I want him to have some struggles, as it will make him stronger,  but I want him to have the chance to have a running start. I think early learning gives him that.
I want my son to become anything he wants to be. If he wants to be a physicist and he struggles with history or geography in school, I want him to have had that head start so that he can cover all those "unnecessary" for his degree subjects by having more time to apply himself to them. And to still maintain good academic standing.  If he wants to have a low paying job and be happy, so be it. But I don't want him to regret not having had the chance to be anything he wanted to be when he was younger and his brain was more supple and things were easier to learn.
Also... Scholarships help pay for college.


This one is very important to me. Because it is fun! And early learning enhances life. My son just turned 4 and his life is so rich. Not in a monetary way. But he has so much knowledge that his play, his creativity, and his daily life is richer, more full of variety and ideas. People have mentioned that his interests are so complex and he loves such a wide variety of things. One moment he is playing engineer as he constructing an elaborate contraption, that we learnt about from learning about, simple machines and other basic physics concepts like forces, inertia, energy and more. The next moment we are discussing how the mammary glands of a cow makes milk as he is playing farmer. Next moment we are acting out scenes from A Little Princess as we discuss charity and kindness and having a positive attitude. Many of my friends children are mostly just acting out the latest Disney movies and are obsessed with certain characters to the expense of all the wonderful things in our world. This leads to me next reason.

This world is a wonderful amazing place and I think knowing how things work is joy. Knowing why we have seasons, how to predict weather, knowing how to speak several languages, or how to converse with pretty much anyone, anywhere about a variety of subjects because one is so well read is bliss. It makes for a happier life. At least I think it is. And it is my ultimate goal to be sage like.

The above reasons were important before my son was born. This next reason mattered more after I met him. My son had some issues at birth and some medical issues for the first few years of life. There was an 80% chance of mental retardation from lack of oxygen at birth. Then an additional 80% chance on top of that due to failure to thrive. He was in an early intervention program, red flagged for autism, later with a preliminary diagnosis,  he had social issues and speech regressions. Now at 4 years old he is above average developmentally, he has extensive vocabulary and his autistic traits are manageable.  He is independent, reads well, loves math and science. He asks hundreds of challenging and well thought out questions.  And he is a great little companion for me to spend my days with. Which makes us both happy.

Non Americas say "zed" for the letter z. So even in English zee is not universal.

I can't help with the language aspect. But I highly recommend that you check out www.readingbear.org for English. It is free and really well done.

My 4 year old recently had a birthday and here are some gifts that he loves.

Snap circuits (my number 1 recommendation)
Play doh
Lego.


Somethings I am getting him for Christmas are

Compass
Magnifying glass
Pocket watch
Puzzles
Waffle Iron (he randomly asks to make waffles for breakfast a lot)
A hot wheels car track.
And lego... Never can have too much lego right?

Not sure this helps but this is what we have done for math.
We started dabbling in RS A when James was 2. It was a great program for him then. And we took a lot from the program. But I didn't feel the need to go forth. We tried out Singapore Math. 1A and 1B but it didn't mesh with us. Not sure why? I wonder if I have the wrong books, I just get so confused with what I am meant to be using.
Instead we switched to Spectrum K. It is a pretty affordable and bare bones workbook but it covers all the necessary math in a traditional way. James really loves Spectrum. At almost 4 he has almost finished spectrum Math 1 and I do intend to get the next book. They are perfect for him to do independently.
For our math spine we settled on Go Math! Grade 1. James does well in it. And he enjoys it. But it is a very thorough, hence slow program. I highly recommend it for struggling students, but I also think it is great for EL students to work ahead. There is a lot of writing mind you, but James is at the stage where he wants to write and needs practice. Yup! We get writing practice through math. Go Math! Is a program that is a hybrid of Singapore and Saxon methods. I believe Go Math! Might extend into middle school but I don't think we will use it for that long.
We have Saxon 5/4 sitting at home and I am thinking about introducing it full when James finishes Go Math! Grade 2. So probably when James is about 4.5-5 years old.

I highly recommend. In fact I am about to go an jump on this deal for future grades. James does splash math every day. He does 20 questions of first grade, and 15 number facts. He also will do some 2nd grade periodically. The beginning of second grade has a lot of review so I am trying to get him to work through that until it exceeds his level.

Wow! I want it. I am just afraid to look at the price.

After being involved in a very active online community of children born the same month as my son I would say the numbers are about right. The low numbers that is. This is from reading all the concerned posts from about the 150+ active mothers. By many kids 2nd birthday very few kids were exceeding several handfuls of words. With the rare exception there were very few boys, all the better talkers were girls and may have began talking a little at about the 16 month mark.

Having a son who was speech delayed (despite doing all those "right" vocabulary enhancing things) gave me a lot of access to children that were assessed for early intervention. The consensus was that boys and girls do verbally develop different. James' EI specialist has never once in 7 years qualified a girl for a speech delay (without there being another underlying issue), however about 2/3 of her children that qualified at 2 years old were boys that only had a speech delay. Out of those boys about 3/4 of them graduated (no longer has a speech delay) before they were 3. James had 17 kids in his class over the 1.5 years that he was in EI and only 4 of them (including James) qualified for an IEP at 3.

First I want to say I am sorry about your back. Back pain can be the worst.

While it is fresh in my mind I want to agree with you about how easy it is for them to forget! I have found that there is no such thing as mastery for the young. Even at almost 4 James still needs constant spiraling through work of he will forget chunks of it.

I would focus on fine motor skills. Threading beads on string. Putting coins in slots, playing with playdoh. Using chopsticks. All of that leads up to writing.

Cognitively I would work on some matching games with cards. If he knows his animal sounds you make a sound and have him find the animal from a set of cards laid out. Start with 3, then add more and more.
Have him match little forms of animals with the cards. Have him match shapes to cards. We had some shape blocks. And I just traced those and drew them on cards. Match colors. So on and so on. Shadow matching is good too.

Work on honing the senses. Montessori covers this like no other. I will find a link in a little bit.

Those are a few of the things James was loving at this age.

http://www.infomontessori.com/sensorial/introduction.htm