The Three R's

I am now officially teaching dd5 reading, 'ritin', and 'rithmetic. I've been teaching her to read out of old phonics textbooks for a few months now; it's going so well that now I sometimes have to tell her to stop reading and go to bed (sniff...she takes after her mom...and her dad...). A few weeks ago I added a daily sentence of copywork to her formal education. And on Tuesday, we started her kindergarten math book; I decided to go with the Math K5 worktext for several reasons:

1) It looks like fun. In fact, she begged today to do three sheets instead of the two I'd told her she'd be limited to.

2) It doesn't require a packet of specific manipulatives. IMHO, math manipulatives are over-hyped, for popsicle sticks work just fine to practice addition and subtraction, manipulating actual coins and bills is more meaningful than playing with plastic tokens, and I want to teach fractions with freshly-baked pies and pizzas (yum!).

3) Math K5 covers the basic subjects I want her to learn during her kindergarten year (which in many states would still be a preschool year for her due to her fall birthday) while I study her learning preferences in order to decide between Saxon and Singapore math for her later use.