Everyone knows that the basic college degree is nowadays nothing more than a high-priced high school diploma, and it hurts everyone, because careers that once only required a high school diploma, now require a college degree, and whereas once having a degree was a ticket to a better future for those who did get one, because they were exceptional, once everyone gets one, it becomes, instead of an advantage, a basic necessity, but unlike a high school diploma, it costs a lot of money. In fact, it costs far more compared to its expected return on the investment, today, than it ever has in the past.

So it is getting to be less and less of a sensible value.

If you insert more pipes into a closed system, the pressure per pipe drops (so long as the pipes are all the same diameter).

When people got on board with the two-income family, instead of making every family twice as well-off financially, what happened was, double the number of pipes in a closed system, and you halve the pressure per pipe. Double the number of incomes, and everyone suddenly needs two incomes to make what previously only required one income.

And so it goes with degree inflation.
Degrees CAN still be either a basic necessity, or even a competitive edge, rather than a net loss, if a person chooses wisely and has a shot at the most prestigious degrees from the most prestigious institutions. But whether they come out ahead financially, over a person who entered a trade right out of high school without taking on any debt, and by the time they started a family was a master at that trade, and pulling in top dollar, depends heavily on just how much debt-to-income that college degree produces.

And I can't disagree more heartily, that a college degree produces any kind of "intellectual maturity". Worldwide travel and real-life total independence, risk-taking (and bearing consequences without being even partially sheltered by anyone!), self-directed living in the world out there with no safety net, and work experience that puts a person in a wide variety of walks of life, produces emotional and intellectual maturity that is breathtaking to behold.

I won't say that a higher education is never a good return, or is always a waste of time and money, but I do wish there were a merit-based system whereby anyone who can demonstrate the prerequisite knowledge and abilities, is eligible for the career that demands that knowledge and those abilities, instead of the current system whereby you basically buy yourself a ticket to ride, and so long as you don't flunk out, you emerge on the other side with your right to apply for this or that job, even if you're a comparative moron, while someone who is brilliantly well-educated and totally capable, gets passed over if they don't have the right "papers".

It makes the "papers" a symbol, and the only entity benefited by this system, are the businesses who take large sums of money to offer you the chance to earn their degrees. The investment and risk are all yours...they laugh all the way to the bank, because if you pay a mortgage-sized debt in hopes that their degree will translate into any return at all, and it turns out you are pouring coffee in a chain restaurant while trying to make minimum payments for the next 30 years on that debt, the joke is on you.

And that joke is getting so big, it's not funny anymore.

It depends on the kid, because I have one child who LIKES doing workbook-type activities, who is a toddler. But that has not been the case with my other kids, and my general attitude is, let them be children. The single most important brain-building activity for children of tender years, is unstructured play, and having time and space to imagine, create, and come up with things themselves, and generally think their own thoughts. All of us need that to a certain extent, but in early childhood, the need is critical for developing creativity and original thinking.

So, I do not come at it with the idea that toddlers and little children must be trained in how to think, but more that they must be shielded from being trained in how to think, so that their potential for creativity and risk-taking isn't flattened.

That said, my toddler really and truly does love to draw, paint (especially, paint, and that means with brushes rather than fingers), and is doing phonics, letters, and numbers more readily than his much-older brother, because for whatever reason, he seems to have been born wired to want books and reading. He holds a pencil in a tripod grip, even!

So with an outlier like that, I just try to parent to his signals, but I don't push. If he just wanted to play all day, that is perfectly normal and healthy. But if he brings me a book or wants to watch Leapfrog or fill in worksheets and proudly display them on the fridge, we do that too. As for the older brother, he is NOT into workbooks, and I am doing my best not to foster a hatred of learning or a resignation to the idea that learning is tedious, by not pushing him into a mold that he finds unbearable. So the older brother plays Minecraft whenever he can, watches physics videos because he's genuinely fascinated by origins of the universe and space/time/gravity and the scale of things...but I keep requirements extremely basic and short on any written work. He still makes sudden quantum leaps when he's ready...half a year ago, he was frustrated that he couldn't even draw shapes properly (and was quite old enough!) but then, poof, his brain matured and now he draws stick figures.

Because his toddler brother is already capable of making actual representative art that even looks like what it is supposed to be, we work hard at praising effort and heart, and work hard to avoid praising innate gifts that the learner himself did not bring into being and therefore isn't responsible for the degree to which he possesses them. And we are going to have to work really hard at avoiding comparisons or using them as negative motivators (like, "Look, your little brother is already doing it! Don't let him pass you!")

Didn't mean to diesel on the topic. But you can tell I am not on board with excessive "training" at younger and younger ages, because not having enough time for free, self-directed play, actually blunts intellect later on.

I loved reading this thread, for the discourse.
I think there are a lot of people out there selling the idea that we can all mold our kids into Profoundly Gifted if we but buy the right strategy, the right method, the right tools, and apply them rigorously enough. My aim is to help my kids be their best selves, but they have to be happy in their own growth or it would just be me forcing them into a mold for pride or fear.

It's also fine to meet her where she is, and give her what she needs, and not what someone else says she needs, or what some book said she could do if you just follow the formula they give. Manipulatives are what we use, and I strive for conceptualization with purposeful avoidance of performance anxiety or memorization. And even then, I see that each of my kids is unique, and just when I thought I had it figured out, the next one has her own game plan.

Abacus has been good for us. And not to worry: with or without super-early interventions, most kids still turn out largely according to their original blueprint, so long as we do no harm, so it takes a lot of pressure off parents to have all the answers before we even understand the questions.  .

We use a soroban abacus, but keep a straight-10 (10 rods with 10 beads each, that move across instead of vertically) big primary-years abacus for my toddler to play with, and sliding the beads across, one additional bead per rod, shows the relationships very nicely, in a way that can be internalized. Internalizing is very different from mere memorizing, and I agree that memorizing, though it gets results (if the result you want is a right answer without thinking), but is less robust a way to learn. Instant recall can happen as a result of repeated manipulation and internalization, and that way, it stays. That which is merely memorized can be forgotten.

Learning the inverse relationships within 10 is very important to ease of mental math, and ease of abacus use. (Inverse numbers meaning, 7 and 3 are the flip sides of each other with relation to 10, and so are 6 and 4, 5 and 5, and 2 an 8, 1 and 9)

That makes knowing that adding 6 can mean adding 10 and subtracting 4, or that subtracting 7 can mean subtracting 10 and adding 3 back, easy.
Best wishes!

My middle child is 5, and will turn 6 in the late fall/early winter. We are already established as a homeschooling family, and he hated the preschool experience due to the increasingly ridiculous regimentation and regulations, and finds peers in kids up to 6 years older than himself. We will be resuming involvement in the excellent all-homeschool choir an hour's drive away led by a former music teacher who is now a homeschool mom.

I see a lot of comments on how social people's kids are, and either that as a reason to school, or else a bunch of organized activities as how they will provide a social life despite homeschooling. It probably varies a lot by region, but in my state, there are enough homeschoolers that they have their own prom for those who want that, and having a positive social life is more often given as a reason NOT to send kids to schools. But I know there are people in isolated areas where they either can't get along with the local homeschoolers (such as being the only ones who don't disavow evolution, for instance) or else, there just aren't any to speak of. And in that case, if school is the only way for a child to have friends, that would be another kettle of fish, although there are still such things as scouts, 4-H, and so on.

Since my son finds peers in boys several-to-many years older than himself, school would be a more socially isolating experience. As it is, by not going, he can enjoy friendships with other local homeschooled boys who are 4-6 years older than he is. That would be impossible if he went to school.

My daughter is the same...her best friends are girls several years older than herself, and that would be hard or impossible, in school. She just feels like girls her age are much, much younger, and I can see the difference when she is with girls her age. She's nice to them of course, but it's like playing with and being nice to a small child. Fine for a while, but after that, she needs girls who are her peers, regardless of age. And by homeschooling, she gets to have that.

Hello Jemi,

I'm an American, so can't speak on sources for British history and literature, except a small personal recommendation for British classic novel "Swallows and Amazons" by Arthur Ransome, which is an adventure tale written in the 1930's, of four siblings who embark on a summer-long sailing adventure to a small island close to their home. A pair of self-designated pirate girls on similar sojourn, join them for imaginative adventures, with a lot of sailing terminology and detailed descriptions of every aspect of their hardy outdoorsmanship and survival skills. Some of the content might be a bit much for very young children, but my rowdy 5-year-old boy found it riveting and delightful, and my 8-year-old daughter enjoyed it also, though she likely wouldn't have, at 5. We are about to begin the sequel.

Aside from that one small recommendation, there are also at least a couple of British mums on the secular homeschooling board www.secularhomeschool.com  and a very large and active discussion forum, with a curriculum comparison and discussion area.

 I'm largely leaving history alone except as it comes up incidentally in our lives. We have enough to be getting on with, and also need to have a social life, get exercise, and see the outdoors, so I don't want our sit-down studies to take more than 4 hours daily.

The reason I feel confident in leaving history for later, is that when they are older, they can read and learn about it, quite independently, when it will make more sense to them. I don't see any advantage in young children memorizing dates and names, or learning about major wars, when major wars and the complicated political underpinnings, will be both more interesting, and more assimilable, even without my help, if I but wait.

finger slipped and my reply disappeared, I think!

I am after the same info. on fingering ,as the Nurture Minds curriculum uses 3 fingers, and everywhere else I see, including videos on competitors in Japan, uses 2.

Also, is there any benefit in reversing the order in which Big and Little friends are either added or subtracted?

My daughter has an easier time when she can deal with all problems the same way: either use the inverse number first in all cases, or do the adding or subtracting of 5 or 10 first, in all cases. But her workbook makes it very clear that when adding using an inverse number, it's one way (I forget which, but say for our purposes it's adding the 10 bead first and then subtracting the inverse number), and when subtracting using inverse numbers, it's the reverse order of operations (first deal with the adding of the inverse number, and then carry the 10 bead, in this case subtracting).

I don't get why it's so important to do the carrying first in one case, and last in the other, so long as the kid understands that for overall addition, you must add the 10 and subtract the inverse for a net gain, and for overall subtraction, you must subtract the 10 and add the inverse, for net loss. Why does it matter to deal with the 10 first in one case, and deal with it second, in the other case?

But I have to assume there is a reason, because they are so exacting on it, just as there must be a reason for their careful training to use 3 fingers. Yet I know some of the leading competitors in the world use 2 fingers....I just wish I could find out if leading competitors also do their operations in reverse order with respect to the carrying bead, between adding and subtracting. I just need to know before committing. It would be sad to have my kids learn a method that slows them down, for no other reason than it was the first one I encountered.