Does Anyone Else Homeschool

Hi H.,

I am homeschooling my 10 & 11 year olds. My kids were in a private school until the age of 8 & 9. We used a varied curriculum. Two of my favorite sources are books.
1) A Thomas Jefferson Education, by Oliver Van Demille
2) The Well Trained Mind, by Susan Wise Bauer & Jenny Wise
(Susan Wise Bauer is the Author of STORY OF THE WORLD, the history series so many of us homeschoolers use.)

We use an ordinary math workbook, from Abeka & our kids also participate in John's Hopkins online math program.
If your child is at or above grade level, & you are not bothered about allowing her to be tested, I would immediately have her tested by JHU for their online program for gifted youth. (The testing for an 8 y.o. is much easier than if you wait until she's 9 or maybe 10.) This program provides higher level math & proceeds at your child's speed,with an online tutor that will provide one on one, real time "white board" sessions with your child.
http://cty.jhu.edu/

I also like to go to events with the Family Resource Center.
http://www.family-resource-center.com/
All the events have been well run & fun! I especially prefer the ones that run for an extended period, like Zoo School, that is one day once a month for an entire "school year."

This is a fun place to do spelling time! Once again, very little involvement from me & they send me updates twice a week.
http://www.spellingtime.com/

My ABSOLUTE favorite tool for teaching is the IEW. (Institute for Excellence in Writing.
http://www.writing-edu.com/
I wish we started it earlier. Age 8 is perfect. Their website & support group advises getting the DVD's they offer for parents FIRST, then if you want, get a set for the kids or just teach the kids yourself. It is the only advice they give that I disagree with. I would get the DVD's for the student FIRST.... For you that would be:
The Student Writing Intensive, level A.
http://writing-edu.com/writing/swi.php
This course seems highly overwhelming when you begin, but, is actually VERY SIMPLE & OBVIOUS once you start using it. This one you must do side by side with your child. We watched all the videos together & I did all the work too. It is the only way I could monitor the work results. This course, as well as the JHU are a little bit pricey, but, both worth it. Especially IEW.

Good luck on your homeschool journey, I find homeschooling moms to be the most supportive group of ladies around!
D.

Hi H.,

We homeschool our two children in Western Mass. There are quite a few homeschoolers here. My daughter is almost 9 and my son is 4. Each year gets easier for us so far. We do a combination of unschool and two curriculums. We did use Saxon Math. My daughter hated it. Then we switched to Math U See which is a superb program. It uses rod manipulatives. The same manipulatives are used throughout the entire program. You don't buy new ones each year. They offer a free demonstration DVD that they will mail you for free from their website. The other curriculum that we use is The Story of the World by Susan Wise Bauer, which you can find at Peace Hill Press or Amazon. There are tons of reviews about it at Amazon. My daughter loves it. The book is not at all dry. Homeschooling can be difficult at times, but I couldn't imagine sending my children to school.
There is a pro-homeschool site that you may be interested in. This site claims that there are about 2 million homeschoolers. This figure is based on the rate in which homeschooling numbers have grown from one year to the next, from 1999 to 2003.
http://www.schoolandstate.org/home.htm
http://www.mathusee.com/
http://www.peacehillpress.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWCA...
There are quite a few Story of the world items at Ebay Express.
Happy Homeschooling!
E.

Hi H.,

We homeschool, too! You didn't mention where you live, but we are in Western Maine, there are lots of hs families here. It was hard taking ds out of public Kindergarten (he finished public k then we began hs in first, he's now in 2nd) because he thoroughly loves being in a group! He really likes learning at home, so to keep him smiling he is in several extracurricular things at all times, plus we are in two hs groups! One meets weekly and we do geography and show and tell or book shares together, the other has different things going on at all times that you can join (art, dancing ect).

After all those social things that keep us going, the learning seems a piece of cake. Our first year was a bit hard, figuring out what our day would be like. We learned we do NOT like the workbook aproach like Abecka or Bob Jones, But we love getting information from interesting books and then talking about them.

We love Beautiful Feets' Early American History,

We take out 10 good books at a time from the library,talk about them, reread them; pretty much devour them.

We love Handwriting Without Tears -I thought I didn't need a program for handwriting, but I am so glad we stumbled across that program.

Our only workbook we do use is Explode the Code. we do 2 pages a day, mostly they are fun, and that covers us for both spelling and phonics reinforcement.

Science is often just nature walks then we come home and put some memory of it our nature journal.

I do have to put a HUGE plug in for our math curriculum Rightstart Math. It is fun and he is learning so much!!!

In either 3rd or more likely 4th grade our plan is to go to something more formal, probably, hopefully, Sonlight. In my opinion it is the cream of the crop for small families, but a bit pricy.

Btw, although I do not follow them to the letter, both Ruth Beechick and Charlotte Mason are who I consider my models on how to hs. Both of them and any thing else I have mentioned can be found with a google search.

One last thing, I find lots of interesting things and tips at lovetolearn.net

So, what about you, what are you doing??? Take care, W. W

Hi H.! I homeschool 3 of my 4 children! We love it and the opportunities it provides for us! We use a combination of stuff. We use Wordly Wise for Vocab/Spelling, Saxon for Math and the Grammar program written by one of the math people (I don't have it handy to check it). We use Apologia for Science. But more than anything else, we use life to learn from.

M.
Mom to 4 (ages 13, 9, 5, 2)

I'll bet you got a lot of responses. I homeschooled my son from third grade thru high school graduation. (That was 6 years ago.) I'd do it again in a heartbeat if I had it to do again. In fact I'm sincerely hoping that my grandchildren will be homeschooled. (The oldest is 3.) I used Abeka curriculum. The first year I was able to buy second hand, after that I sold at the end of each year and was able to buy second hand for the following year. I'd buy new workbooks but that was about it. I also used some Bob Jones high school books. Personally I preferred Abeka mostly because the teacher's book was easier to read. Bob Jones put a picture of the student's page with notes under it. The print was small because of that. As far as social developement just get your daughter involved in local reading groups at the library, (esp. summer programs), participate in community center activities as much as you feel comfortable. Join Girl Scouts, 4-H, church youth groups. Whatever you find available and to your tastes. The first change I noticed in my son was that I no longer had a "monster" coming home at 3:00. He would be so frustrated from school that he was at his rope's end as far as patience was concerned. Keep at it, you'll have a much better adjusted child, who is more social, and mature than if she goes to public school. During high school my son had the option of going to a private Christian school that I would be volunteering at (to pay his tuition) or staying home with me. He chose staying home. That way he could work more hours and still do school and still have a life. Good luck and hang in there. Nothing is more important than your children (except of course your relationship with God.)

Hi H.,
I'm homeschooling 4 of my 7 children currently. the other 3 are little, still. Since we are Catholic we chose a Catholic curriculum, Mother of Divine Grace, which I love. It's a classical curriculum, with lots of historical fiction and other great reading. There are so many good curricula out there now, and so many homeschoolers. Or you can pick and choose, and create your own curriculum. I chose the ready made lesson plans, because I'm not real organized, and with so many little ones, I just didn't feel I had the time to create a curriculum. But I have made little changes here and there as I've gone along, and my kids are doing very well. More importantly, I noticed a huge difference in their confidence and ability to interact with people of all ages, since we took them out of school. We've been homeschooling for 5 years now, and we have K, 3rd, 5th, and 6th grades now. There are always sports and other extracurricular things to get involved in for socialization, and homeschooling groups, etc. It's a struggle sometimes, but definitely worth it. Also, Love-to-Learn is a great website for homeschooling resources and is very reasonably priced. i also get a lot of my textbooks through Ebay and Amazon. Good luck to you.
C.

Lots of homeschoolers here in Arlington, MA and surrounding towns. I agree with you that they learn more outside of school. My family are unschoolers so we use no curriculum, just follow wherever our children lead.

J. (-:

H.,

My boys are grown now but they were homeschooled for about 7 years. You are lucky that you can create extra learning experiences like field trips, and making things hands on, that public schools rarely do.

As far as curriculum, Abeka is advanced curriculum but good for the more advanced children. We used Konos, which is a unit study and works with a lot of hands on. I have also tried the Robinson curriculum. So it really is just a matter of who your child is and how you teach. If I can be of further help please just respond back.

L.
____@____.com

my parents homeschooled my younger brothers and sisters and went through Liberty Christain school. They got books from them and were tested and even got a class rank(needed for some college applications. They also got books from Christain Book Distributers(in Peabody,Ma)they also got together with people from church and went on field trips with other families ang got group discounts. I can email you the church they belonged too(they've moved)and if you're interested you might be able to meet some other home schoolers that way. My mother used toi go to a home schoolers convention once a year.

I homeschooled our 24 & 23 yr olds and I will be my grand daughter as well...of course, one homeschools if one is a parent anyway!!

Let's see, we did Saxon math..spelling was done primarily within research papers they did. We tended toward the unit study approach and one year we got stuck on doing everything to do with the Civil War and another time 6 months my daughter studied penguins!! We used a scope and sequence through science and it was never a problem with hands on learning and history they read, read and read some more. They both love history to this day!

The older they got, the more we taught through their interest. My daughter was so involved in animals that she read medical books on chicken diseases and learned how to train horses and things like that. My son started a Toyota Landcruiser business at 15yrs old and when he did that we tailored his curriculum to business math/taxes and loads of business related things. He now employs all of us and some outside folks and is doing extremely well!

I know this was more then you asked, but my advice is to watch and listen to the child's gifts and build on them and she will thrive.

I was homeschooling earlier this year, but circumstances led to our son going to PS for Kindergarten. We loved homeschooling :) Anyway, we used Saxon for Math, Phonics curriculum press plaid workbooks, Starfall website, books and workbooks, The Usborne book of science experients. These are just a few things we used. I used to go to the library and get books that went with whatever we were studying or that correlated with the time of the year and did activities that tied in with them. I was going to look into the Five In A Row series, but didn't get around to it. There is the Homeschool buyers co-op website if you don't already know about it that has some good deals. Happy homeschooling!

Hi H.,

It looks like you've already gotten a lot of responses. We live in Kittery Point and have homeschooled for 14 years now. Our oldest is in his first year of college out in Michigan. Currently I am homeschooling our youngest 3 ( 7,9,11_ soon about to have birthdays), out of 6 althogether. Last year was the last year I homeschooled them all. I'd be happy to be of any help to you should you like to contact me. Homeschooling is great and it is what you make of it.

Regards,

M. Rees

I did homeschool last year and the year before but after having a new baby and both in Jr. high I sent them back. The teachers are all inpressed with how well thay are both doing and how well behaved they are. I used Accelerated Christian Educations's School Of Tommorow. I liked it because they did their work on their own and asked for help when they needed it. There was no lesson planning. We memorized 5-8 verses of scripture a month, such as Psalm 100. Every sience P.A.C.E. had a experiment to do. I think they enjoyed home schooling but they enjoy public school here. We lived in Maryland when we started. My kids hated the schools there.

Dear H., Hundreds of thousands of parents home school, maybe millions as parents are always "home schooling" their children (or should be) on appropriate boundaries and general knowledge of the world.
Most states have a department of home schooling (Education Department of each state?) from which we can get books, computers, materials of all sorts, and lists of home schooling groups for subjects such as art, music, physical education. Field trips are another cooperative item. I know Ohio is one of the leading states for these services.
Parents home school for a variety of reasons, not just for religious reasons. If you homeschool, you yourself must be a lifelong learner by getting together with others who can teach you how to teach. The state programs include bi-monthly "check ups" by a supervising teacher.

Hi H.,

I've homeschooled for nine years now. Both my kids did one year in the system while I was going through a divorce, but I've been able to bring them home after finding telecommuting work.

We are pretty eclectic in our approach. Over the years, we used Saxon, Miquon, Singapore and Power Basics for math (the latter being very well recieved). We'ved used Wordly Wise, Spelling Workout (Modern Curriculum Press) and a collection of Grammar programs in addition to substantial reading assignments for Language Arts.

I've been using Rainbow Resource to purchase curriculum since I first began. It is an online curriculum source for homeschoolers that carries a wide variety of materials for any HS approach. It is run by a homeschooling family, offers very afforadable pricing and very good service.

HTH :-)