Does anyone have problems with using American resources for early maths and reading?

[PerspicaciousGreen]

Our son is four and we're planning to try out homeschooling, starting sometime in the next year. We plan to start with only having sit down "lessons" in maths and reading, and adding in more formal instruction in more subjects gradually as he seems able and interested. We've got lots of opportunities for clubs and trips and side-projects along the way!

I've been doing some research into curricula and there are several American resources that sound really great for us, but I was wondering if anyone knows of any trouble we might have with them. For example, in teaching reading basics, Americans spell some words differently (e.g. color). I know in high school they structure maths very differently to how I learned it - I don't know if this extends to primary school maths. We're not planning to follow the National Curriculum exactly, but would like to sort of be aware of it so we have the option of transitioning to a brick and mortar school in the future. Personally I do feel the need for a structured programme for these basic skills to get me started with the whole homeschooling endeavour - I'll probably go a bit more off piste as we get more confident.

Should I stick to British resources or am I overthinking the issues that might arise?

There are usually fb groups for each curricular where you can ask about any changes you need to make. Usually it's as simple as dollars to pounds, weight ect.
We are child led and don't stick to one curriculum but dip in and out of a few and find the american ones are far better than uk ones as there are so many more home educators there.
You will find what works for your family, but don't be surprised if your 4-year-old just isn't ready to sit and do work yet. My 7-year-old is only just ready. As long as you play, read, go to groups, you will keep up.

I used mainly US resources for mine when they were little (16 and 20 now). Progress is slower than NC resources go through things but builds much firmer foundations which means that they seemed to grasp things much easier later on.

for maths the main topics where there's a (small) issue are:
money (quarters nickels and dimes etc)
units of measurement : US still non-metric and using e.g. quarts pints and cups rather than litres and millilitres.
So you'd need to supplement those with UK money and metric units.

For reading, I don't think there's any issue with US resources. The spelling differences are so slight and not often encountered at that level, and can always be explicitly taught or just absorbed by osmosis later.

FWIW "Sit down lessons" not really necessary at that age - keep it fun.
Leap frog are a US provider with various fun products around that level. From memory we needed a multi-region DVD player to play their DVDs.
Beast Academy is a fabulous US resource which is well worth looking at if your child turns out to be mathematically inclined. But it doesn't start till a bit higher.
There are lots of good UK resources too, e.g. songbirds phonics, maths whizz. We used a mix of UK and US. It wasn't a problem.

Thanks! I took the plunge and bought "Teach your child to read in 100 easy lessons", and we've done two so far (skipping the writing task at the end). It really does only take 10-15 minutes and that's Goldilocks-like just right for us right now. I like how scripted it is for me, as it's giving me confidence.

I'd like to find a similar thing for maths - something that is reeeeeaaaaaallllly short each day and not too challenging and quite scripted.

You might find a few fairly minor issues with phonics, depending on what your own accent is like.
In American English all the ‘r’s are pronounced, even at the end of the syllable, like in ‘car’.
The vowel this use in ´lot’ and ´cot’ and ´dog’ is different too. This might mean some rhymes in learning to read ressources don’t work in your accent.

You're over thinking it.
I use it, they'll read English books with British spellings more...
RE maths, you could get the UK version of math u see. We use a different American maths curriculum, we skip the money and use a UK workbook for it along with measurement. (We do both measurements, took a little longer at beginning but I would say has paid of).
The workbook isn't nearly as fun as the curriculum but gets the job done.

My plan is year 8 or 9 moving over to GCSE resources, which will obviously be UK based.

Urgh I wrote & lost a long post.

have a look at Life of Fred - Apples is the first one. (Although at 4 I would at most have some Cuisenaire Rods to play with) each chapter is a short story about Fred which incorporates maths & there are a handful of questions to answer after. All of mine adore Fred & the teen still listens in when I read it to the youngest.

the Sir Cumference picture books are great maths stories too

Beast academy is fabulous & our experience was that there are very very few parts of KS3 not covered & their foundation/understanding is really strong.

We used Maths Factor which involves a very quick video lesson each day from Carol Vordeman and now use Masterbooks Maths Lessons for a Living Education which is American. Both these methods are ‘little and often’ and have really helped to build confidence and progress. It’s taken a while to find what works for us. I also bought wild maths curriculum but just use it for ideas for how to teach maths in the garden, beach and woods etc. YouTube is good for seeing what the American curriculums are like, there are a lot of homeschooling vloggers who do reviews and flip throughs. Good luck!