Do you homeschool?

Question

Where and with what school do you work with? do you traditionally homeschool without an outside entity? What makes what you do good? and what is the downside of it? I homeschool my 9 year old through virtual academy, and it is an awesome school and curriculum, we love it! wanted to see who else out there does too!

Answer 1

This will be fun to see what everyone is doing. Thanks for asking.

Basic Background - This is our 15th year homeschooling. My oldest son is in college and was homeschooled since half way through kindergarten. My next child, my daughter, has been homeschooled from kindergarten to her senior year part way through. I say that because she decided to try public for her senior year, but found public school to be ridiculus and wants to go back to homeschooling. Her last day of public school will be this Friday. My next child is in 8th grade. We used a virtual school for him for 4th to 7th grade because he is absolutely passionate about computers and the curriculum seemed a perfect match for his passion. It was a great experience. Our state virtual only goes up to 8th grade and because they went back to lottery when they went state, we didn'y do it this year. We decided to take some of the neat features we saw in the virtual and explore using them as a traditional homeschooler for high school.

One of the neat things we liked about the virtual was the Elluminate online classroom. That is one thing we are still doing even now that he isn't in the virtual. With the online classroom, we can get homeschool kids together, live, for classes taught by volunteers or perhaps even a tutor. It has full duplex audio, a fantastic whiteboard system, text chat, webcam, application share, and so much more. Four donors have gotten together to pay for our online classroom and another family has set up a course management system. With all the donated stuff, the classes are free. This year we are testing the idea with about 6 classes. This semester our classes are Literary Analysis, Composition, Saxon Algebra I, and Aplogia Chemistry for the high schoolers. I also am exploring its usefulness with my 1st grader. I teach Phonics and Math 1.

I am really excited about the potential in this idea. For the kids, they have classmates right there in the online classroom with them and a teacher/volunteer giving presentations and helping the students understand the material. The kids love it, especially the teens. We have homeschool kids from all over the US and a few from Canada participating. Some classes have as few as three students; others have up to 12. At the moment, since I am the only teacher, I am pretty busy as you can well imagine. I wanted to be sure the whole idea could work from the technical end of things. Now that I see that it works great, I am hoping to move to a co-op format so we can get more classes up and rolling. It is great to feel you can have one or two of the children logged in to an online co-op class from home working with another homeschool mom while I am freed up to focus one on one attention with another child at the table. It also gives options for those few subjects I feel less capable of teaching. If a mom that knows Spanish would jump in and teach a Spanish class that would mean my daughter gets to learn from someone who already knows the language instead of doing a curriculum on her own or hiring expensive tutors when she gets stuck since I seem at a loss with this subject. Give me chemistry, algebra, writing and I am fine - Spanish has really been a toughy for me though. Having a trade of me teaching something I love and can do comfortably with a mom who can teach the classes I don't do well is a great idea. And to think we can all do it from home without travel and even in our PJs if we wanted to. LOL

Well, I want to say so much more about other adventures, but my post is already getting looonnngggg. LOL

Answer 2

Tennessee. We homeschool traditionally. We use our own curriculum from a variety of sources. We do not use any virtual or cyber schooling components in our program. Parents are the teachers in our school. Testing is done once a year and an umbrella school maintains our records on line and assures compliance with state requirements.

We love it and like to be able to control the content and pace of the curriculum. We are able to make the work challenging. When necessary we can spend more time on a concept, and when mastery is achieved we move on. No issues of predefined pace.

Answer 3

I do!
I find curriculums and pre-packaged things too limiting. When my daughter left school in the third grade, she was only preforming on a low first grade level in some areas, and fourth grade in others. We were all over the place! In two years we've managed to cover alot of ground. To do so, we had to focus on building up her basic skills, while never forgetting to let her shine at the things she loves. It is a balancing act. But if I didn't like a challenge, I wouldn't like being a mom. I really don't see a downside. You might say I'm a control freak. But it works for me. The one thing we pay for online is Brain Pop. My daughter loves it. It is so funny, she begs to watch and quiz on it.
Some classes vary with interest. This year PE is martial arts classes through the local parks department. Last year she took ballet. For languages we study a little Spanish, even less Japanese and tons of Sign. Other classes, like math stay on a more even course. We just do what feels right and it hasn't let us down yet.

Answer 4

Currently, I am homeschooling my 7 year old. I tried a virtual school that used K12 curriculum, but it wasn't a good fit. Now, I'm a pretty eclectic homeschooler; I use what works for my child. Right now, I'm using Christian Liberty Press for Phonics, Spelling, Nature Reader, and Reading Handbook. I'm also using Bob Jones for Science, Reading, and English Grammar. "What Your 2nd Grader Needs to Know" is also a favorite of mine.

For math, I'm using a book entitled "Math for Your 1st and 2nd Grader: All you Need to Know to Be Your Child's Best Teacher." Other miscellaneous resources are Dollar Tree Spelling, Phonics, Math, Music, and Animals of the World CDs, library books, etc. We do a lot of interesting community classes and field trips too, i.e., Kraft Great Kids Reading Program through the library/park district; a community march against domestic violence, etc., etc. etc.

God bless you and your family's homeschooling endeavors.

Answer 5

Yes, I do homeschool! We pretty much just use our own curriculum by using a little bit of this and a little bit of that. lol
I think that self discipline is the key to learning through homeschooling. When you are younger you need a lot more help of course, but now I basically school myself.

Answer 6

Yes, I do!

I use Penn Foster High School. I am using a private correspondence school and I find that it works best with me. I tried virtual school for a few years (10-11th grade). I'm more of a hands on person, so I work best when I have the actual book in front of me. Also, the learning material is straight to the point with Penn Foster High School program. This is very important to me because if I can't find the point to something I go crazy! They also test main points of what I studied in my lessons so it's very easy for me to remember. I can work on my own, too.

The subject I spend the most on each day is music. I taught myself alto sax and now working on the violin. I spend a great deal of the day listening/playing/reading/writing music! I plan on taking lessons after New Year's.

I went to public school from pre-K to 10th grade. I finally was able to get my parents into letting me homeschool. I really like it and it works well with me.

I don't think that there is a downside to my method of homeschooling. I love it because they take care of all my grading and record keeping. This way I don't have to have my parents keeping track of everything I'm doing. They like that I can work on my own and come to them when I'm really stuck on a problem.

I plan to use Penn Foster College in the near future, too. Like I said, they have been really great with the learning material. I understand everything very well.

Answer 7

My family has homeschooled since 89-90 school year. When I was a kid, I homeschooled for a couple of years. I also tutored kids at a homeschool coop at church for Algebra and Geometry, Chemistry, Biology, etc.
For my kids, we just bought basic curriculum from whatever company I liked for that subject. I like Abeka for Health. I loved the Amish and Mennonite curriculums for Language Arts and early science. I like Saxon for Math. Books just depended on the subject and company I liked. I also bought lots of stuff from local bookstores like Barnes and Nobel and even from Ebay.
The church program used CLASS as a total program.

Answer 8

I was homeschooled by my mother in typing, music and initial computer work.

She was a professional musician for years, trained in a conservatory. She was a supervisor at a computer department at Follettes Publishing.

I was also homeschooled by a legal secretary in writing and she got me published over and over by teaching me how to do it right.

I was unschooled in audio, film, photography, astronomy and computer programming.

ALL of it made me money and put me in the libraries.