More and more God is placing it on my heart to give serious consideration to homeschooling our children. There is a lack of moral and spiritual education in public schools. I've seen it first hand as a former educator. I want to give my children an anchor, a moral compass to take with them into the world. I would love to find a wonderful private school, but I don't think we could afford the tuition for 3 children. So, I have started researching home school curriculum and I am lost! None of the websites I've found have been very informative on WHERE TO BEGIN. I know several of you here home school, so could you please give me some info. to get started. Any helpful resources or websites? And how did you go about it in the beginning? Which curriculum did you choose and why? And do you stick with only one, or mix and match? So many questions...
I could talk your ears off about this subject! I love homeschooling...some days are really hard and it takes a lot of sacrifice, but I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world. The best place to begin is to figure out how you want to do it...do you want to use a box curriculum, text books (like in schools), an eclectic mix, literature based...there are so many choices that it can get overwhelming. I used Sonlight curriculum from the start and now I use that with a mix of other more "classical" curriculum thrown in. I love the freedom you have with homeschool to tailor it to what each of your children need. Just this week, I changed reading curriculum for Will and it has made a huge difference with him! I love Sonlight because you can use it with multiple ages and it uses very good quality literature. I think you would make an awesome homeschool mom for your boys and the new one on the way!
I've done a lot of different things! I knew I wanted to homeschool since before I had kids because I knew some kids that were homeschooled when I was in high school and college, and I had talked to their families. I now feel more strongly than ever that I made the right decision. I agree with Monica - it is a big sacrifice, and I'd be lying if I didn't tell you there were days I think about how much more time and money I'd have if I just sent them to school. But I couldn't do that with a good conscience (I know because I tried it for a year when we were really stuggling financially). I started out with Sonlight curriculum. I did mix other things in. We tried several different math programs. We did always stick with Sonlight core curriculum until this year though. Because of financial reasons and other reasons, we decided to try K12 this year, so the kids are all enrolled in IAVA. It is an online public school. To us, the only differences are that the kids have to do 2 weekly online sessions with their "teacher" in math and LA, we have to keep online records (which I feel is a great thing to have to do - keeps me and the kids more accountable), and we are provided all curriculum and materials for free. They also have field trips so the kids can meet up with other kids enrolled which is great for us because we don't know a single other homeschool family in our immediate area. The curriculum is awesome, very challenging and interesting. We do struggle with always having enough time to get it all done, but that has more to do with the fact that i have 5 kids - 4 in school, so my time is taken up quickly. There are so many different ways to go with homeschooling, and I know that it is overwhelming. I'm not sure what the requirements are where you live, but all I had to do when we were doing our own thing before K12 was turn in a CPI form for each kiddo, and then have them take the yearly test (they send info on that). I know it varies from place to place. I love how you can adjust curriculum to your children's needs, but my main reason is because I want to be the one to influence my kids - not other kids at school. I'm not sure I answered your question - basically just rambling. I also could talk and talk and talk about homeschooling and the options. Sometimes the first year is nice to do a package deal that comes with everything you need and schedules it our for you - Sonlight is great for that. Timberdoodle is another one that is awesome, though their scheduling is set up by yourself from what I know. There is also Switched-on schoolhouse which is a computer based program I've heard a lot of good things about. We are really enjoying K12, and despite it being a "public school", it is essentially homeschooling, and though they call the parent the "learning coach" and you are assigned a teacher to ask questions if you or your students need to, you basically do all the teaching. So I feel it is homeschooling with benefits - free curriculum, teacher support if you need it, field trips, accountability for you and the student.
Oh, how exciting! I found a lot of really helpful books from the library when I was starting out. I really liked the Everything Homeschooling Book, and Homeschooling: The Early Years (this is a series that cover other age ranges as well). I know a lot of people that use boxed curriculum (esp when first starting out), but they can be really expensive, especially for multiple children. I began just by following a scope and sequence (I used Core Knowledge..it's available for free on their website now I believe). I used the library a lot, and online resources (I loved Teacher Filebox especially) along with the What Your Child Needs to know books also by the Core Knowledge Foundation. It worked really well for us for lots of years. Now I do a totally different style of homeschooling which I won't go into, but I have so many years under my belt (both as a teacher and student) that I feel like I can veer from the charted path a bit. I don't know how old your kids are so some of this info may not be useful if you have older students.
HIGHLY HIGHLY recommend grabbing this book from your library... http://www.amazon.com/101-Top-Picks...TF8&qid=1352650178&sr=1-6&keywords=homeschool it has a quiz to help you figure out the best style of homeschooling for you and your kids and then lists curriculum and reviews them to help you at least narrow down your choices to what works best for you and your kids... that being said I needed a curriculum in a box because of my ADD... and went with My Father's World because I also wanted something with a strong biblical worldview... it's been awesome with Moriah who is an awesome student... I'm going to have to re-evaluate with my boys though since they're so ADD/ADHD... but I think I can still make My Father's World work for them I'll just have to split my day up and have 'recess' in between subjects and make the school work something active for them since they don't sit still very well w/o getting totally distracted
We just started homeschooling this year and are lovin it. My son is ten/5th grade. I was lucky to have a niece that is one year older who has always been homeschooled and so we inherited quite a few of textbooks to start. And Drew is my only school age child so I am not stretched thin like most mommas. With that said here is my take on starting out. 1. Some umbrella programs dictate what curriculum you use. 2. If you are joining a co-op or homeschool group, some of those classes will dictate what curriculum you will use. 3. There are so many wonderful science and social studies themed books available, I doubt I will ever buy a textbook unless for a specific co-op class. The downside to that is that it is difficult to find Bible based science and SS books that aren't textbooks. I love doing an in-depth study on some science topics where we put away the textbook we inherited and do enrichment workbook pages or experiments and we LOVE that. We have used education.com for worksheets and watch some video like SchoolHouse Rock on You Tube. 4. For math we use Abeka. What I like about it is that we have a textbook, teacher's key, quizzes and tests book and teacher's key. I assume those are available with most curriculum brands. I don't think SonLight would work for us because my son needs the personal interaction with me and it helps to talk when figuring things out sometimes. My understanding which my or may not be correct is that SonLight is good for the child that easily works independently. I was surprised how much I appreciated the teacher keys and being able to have quizzes and tests so I can see if my Jr. is getting it. Testing is a whole different controversial topic but I am for it as a measuring tool and because HS and the college path requires testing skills. Also Jr. is reading a textbook series referred to as "Fred books". The books are very humorous and so it's an enjoyable read. I really like it but I am not convinced there is enough skill/exercise repetition to make it a stand alone text with nothing else. FYI. Jr. has a study hall period at co-op which is when he reads it. 5. For LA we are using an old public school Scott-Foresman book. It's okay since LA is easy for me but I will not do that next year. 6. It took about 12 weeks for me to get used to the idea that I have total control. 7. There are a million different opinions but there is only one family like yours and whatever you decide will be a good one. If it proves to be a mistake, it will be easy to readjust things or worst case go back to public school. But I want to encourage you because you will never know unless you try. Besides, you are a loving mom and super creative so you will be an awesome Homeschool mom. Please feel free to message me if think of questions later. Good luck.
Thank you girls for all of the advice! I know it will be a big adjustment and require a lot of planning on my part, but I feel that I'm up for the challenge. I am a former educator, so it's not something that I'm a novice at. Next year, my oldest will be in Kindergarten, and he will be my only school age child for two years. I figure that it will be easier to figure it out and make adjustments with just one, than it would be if I waited and had two or three in school at once. I'm really pretty excited about the possibility of it! Still need to do a lot of research and praying, but more and more I feel led in this direction. I appreciate you all weighing in!
