We speak Russian as a second language at home - it is not my native language, neither is it the local language and I find it hard to speak Russian consistently enough so we are at the stage where he understands lots of the simple everyday commands (get this, go there etc) and has a basic vocabulary but doesn't generally speak Russian, even when socializing with my friends who don't speak English. 
My son just started a Russian school on Saturday mornings. He is also quite shy, particularly with adults he doesn't know. The first week he didn't speak in class. The second week, he only repeated a couple of phrases. The third week he volunteered some vocabulary words and this week he recited a short poem. Each week his confidence has grown and his enthusiasm for reading/speaking Russian at home has also improved greatly.

If your little girl is going to a full-time school I can only imagine the progress will be much better than we have with 3 hours once a week. Practice role playing with her the phrases she will need most in the classroom so that it won't be so overwhelming for her:
"Hello, my name is.. what is your name?"
"Can you help me with this, please?"
"Would you like to play with me?"
"I don't understand."
"I need the toilet" etc.

Good luck!

"Mathland," directs the children to meet in small groups and invent their own ways to add, subtract, multiply and divide.

How things change - I seem to remember getting into arguements with my A level teacher when a friend and I would work together to try and figure out how to do the problem (because neither of us understood the textbook explaination she gave us) 

I do think exploring rules and figuring out solutions to problems are fantastic skills to have, but not at the expense of actual learning! How about they teach the kids the proper algorithms that their parents know and understand and only then give them a small part of the class (or an occasional lesson) to explore other ways to do things. At least they would be able to check their answers, then!

Or maybe there should be a compulsory course in common sense added to teaching degrees 

"But Mummy, I NEED to do my lessons NOW!!!!"

[PASS]

I completely agree - praise is getting out of hand in schools now. I was lucky - the praise/experimental maths and spelling was only starting when I was in school and seemed to follow along in the year groups below me without affecting me too much, though I still remember when I took my 12+ (grammar school entrance exam) the teachers told us there 'is no pass or fail' but only those who got over a particular score could go to the grammar school - how is that not a pass-fail situation? Now it is at the point that the newspapers are writing about these 'amazingly talented' young people who PASS GCSEs (tests for 16 year olds) at 6/7/8 and get F or G grades. Since when was an F or G a pass? Since when did they introduce grades below F? In my day, worse than an F was simply 'ungradeable'. I mean, sure, taking an exam 8-10 years early is impressive, but if I was ever to put my son in for an exam early, I would at least wait until he is able to pass it properly. Getting an A grade at 10 -six years early- is way more impressive than a G at 8 in my opinion. 

Should I even mention that when we took our GCSEs and ran out of past exam papers (we would generally finish the 2 year syllabus 4-5 months early to have plenty of practice for the exams) the school gave out the old O level papers - the exams my Mum's generation took - and we could not do them. They were so much harder we couldn't believe it. And the exams have been getting easier and the pass grades lowered every year since. I think it is possible to get an A with 60% in some exams! And even in ENGLISH exams there is only a small number of the questions where they even bother to deduct marks for bad spelling and grammar - you can understand the odd longer word or tricky spelling being overlooked, but kids are getting passing grades with textspeak!     

And no 9 year old should be of the opinion that you don't need to know how to add long numbers because "that's what calculators are for" 

OK, rant over 

There is a massive sale nearly 100 ebooks for $30 at http://www.confessionsofahomeschooler.com/blog/2013/04/the-ultimate-homemaking-ebook-bundle.html

There are lots of general life - cooking/cleaning/diet etc. but also lots of homeschool stuff, including her complete K curriculum with daily lesson plans and some pre-k and K books from 1+1=1.

The sale is only until the 4th.

The OU don't insist on exam results from applicants but I think with under-18s they like to have some form of confirmation that the child is able to work at the pace/level before enrollment (remember I haven't actually done this - it is what I have gleaned from other sources and over time) but regardless they have 'starter' short courses to test the material and with Maths at least there are self-tests to check the level if you aren't sure what to apply for (and only the early level courses are open to those with no exams, I think - the later courses require you to have passed earlier courses).

Hope this clears it up a bit for you - check out their website, I'm sure you can get more concrete information from their FAQ section

Nuria - try Reading Eggs for UK English phonics/reading practice - there were some free access codes on here recently for around 60 days trial and it is not all that expensive to subscribe. That will get your child reading at a 6-7 year old level and should be good for vocabulary etc. We use it and it is generally a hit (if a little tricky for a 3y/o to use the mouse for some games) but I'm afraid I don't have much else in the way of curriculum for language at the moment.

BTBVEN - I'm glad the links helped. I am planning a sort of Robinson-influenced Charlotte Mason curriculum with an accelerated Saxon-based maths path for the mornings and something decidedly more unschool-y for the afternoons. If that makes any sense whatsoever! Simply put around 1hour Maths/English/Russian (2nd native language) and 1/2hr Music/Foreign language (Chinese/Latin) with afternoons free for following interests/outdoors activities and wacky science/art+craft projects.

I joined my local HE yahoo group and there are often messages about groups for GCSE/A-Level classes for some subject or another (usually with much broader age ranges e.g. open to over 13s) so I expect you can find classes when you need them. I think local schools/colleges will also host independent exam submissions for a fee if you taught the material yourself. Check this out for more information: http://www.n-somerset.gov.uk/NR/rdonlyres/DA1ADA52-166C-4AA1-9AB3-29694313FB32/0/14TakingGCSEs.pdf

Of course, if you are accelerating and don't want to send young teens to uni, there is always the OU (where you don't need any exam results when enrolling).

I'm in the UK and plan to homeschool. You are right, it is not so popular but there are probably more homeschoolers than first appears. They generally use the term 'home education' rather than homeschool, though. As far as I have seen the trend in the UK is generally towards unschooling, which might be why there isn't the demand for curricula that there might otherwise be. Have a look online and you will probably find a local HE group - even Netmums has a HE chat thread - a bit tricky to follow but friendly

As far as I understand, if you haven't ever sent your child to school then you just don't apply for/accept any school place and the LEA don't need to be informed or anything. It is a bit trickier if you are trying to get out of the system, but still perfectly acceptable to do so.

Education Otherwise is my go-to reference for HE information. Here is a link to their info on the legal side of homeschooling: http://www.educationotherwise.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=76&Itemid=2

This is part of a series designed for SEN students, but would work well for EL kids, too. There is a story and followed by comprehension activities with 4 skill levels as well as some printable materials to go with it. The rest of the series is expensive, with other fairy stories and even some Shakespeare around £25 per story, so I expect it is out of most people's budget which is a shame.

http://www.senassist.com/online/redridinghood.html?utm_source=Primary+Classroom+Resources+List&utm_campaign=e601d9286d-19_april_2013&utm_medium=email

I got my son a play kitchen for his first birthday. I wanted something 'special' that would last and so a nice wooden kitchen fitted the bill for me. It is still a big favourite

I have looked at getting a balance beam so many times, but apart from the cost I just don't have the space to store one. It would surely be a hit though - likewise a brachiation ladder

Saxon K has you not only touching the objects, but setting them up in a line and then moving each one forwards when you count it - I guess this helps kids to see which ones they counted already.

We have the big giraffe model - unfortunately there is simply no space for the full-on jungle gym with the brachiation ladder that I wanted, but my son swings from the trapeze and has fun climbing the ladder. Be careful that you check the ceiling heights needed for the model you want (we have quite low ceilings so had no option but the fixed-to-wall model) and remember that fixing to plasterboard is not a good idea 

They are actually importing from Russia, so don't be worried if you find Russian instructions before digging deep enough to get the English ones They are a bit of a pain to get together (my dad told me never to buy another one because he wasn't putting it together for me) but not too much worse than your general Ikea flat pack 

On the plus side the customer service was great. The same company sells through amazon, but at a rather inflated price so go to them direct. I didn't get their mats - I found one only slightly thinner than they recommend quite a bit cheaper. The mats also double up as an indoor trampoline I would recommend this product that the same company only seems to sell via amazon http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B007459LBI/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
It goes over the vertical ladders to prevent climbing unsupervised.

Here is a link to one of my blog posts about our climbing frame: http://dancingwithdinos.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/climbing-frame.html

All the Russian parents I knew when I taught in Moscow were a little scary-obsessed with their kids getting perfect grades and working hard at school, so I'm not overly surprised that the Russian group would start doing Saxon. Especially considering that the schools generally stream with a maths or humanities focus. The maths stream in the school I worked at was teaching 15 year olds what I didn't cover until 18 (and both schools were in the top handful for the respective countries).

Hello. I'm just outside London - it seems there are more of us here than it looks! There really should be an option of showing your country to make it easier to find one another!

My son is 3.5 and although we didn't do as much Doman as I would have liked (a combination of him being poorly and me being disorganized) he is still a way ahead of his peers. We are now focusing on learning Maths, handwriting, reading, Russian and Music. He has pretty much finished reception level work a year and a half early 

Is anyone else looking to be even more 'wierd' and homeschool, too? I know it isn't nearly as common here as in the US, but that's not stopping me 

We've now completed the first twenty lessons and a lot of the basic phonics stuff was just review for him. He has started reading short sentences, though so that's good

Even at 3.5 there are some games that are too fast or want too much for him to do properly. Some are timed, which mean that if he is using the mouse himself, trying to sound out all the words when he doesn't need to or otherwise showing a toddler attention span then he fails even if he gets all the right answers (which means I re-do them myself to save the frustration). I would say about 80-90% works with minimal help from me.

Have you seen the reading eggs sight words app. It is almost too fun to get the answers wrong (we only managed to complete one level so far because he deliberately touches all the other things to see what happens) but that is probably workable for a younger child.