Calling all homeschooling parents I NEED your help!!

I'm not a parent, but I was homeschooled through highschool. My Mom used a mixture of Bob Jones and Abeka curriculum. She personally taught me, but I imagine having 4 it would be hard to do it that way. Both curriculums have dvds and it's set up like a classroom. You could probably see previews on their websites. Also if you go to christiansupply.com they have homeschool materials as well that are similar. A friend of mine used it and she liked it.

As far as support groups, I was part of a homeschool association. Normally local churches will have something. And sometimes library's have groups during the week.

I homeschooled, our daughter graduated this spring. I used a mixture of curriculum.
For sciences the only way to go in my opinion is Apologia. http://www.apologia.com/
For math, I LOVED teaching textbooks. http://teachingtextbooks.com/
For Grammar and Literature, Writing, Social Studies and everything else I used Bob Jones. http://www.bjupress.com/page/Home

Some people like Sonlight. http://www.sonlight.com/ I did not care for this at all. I prefer the above. However lots of people do like this so you could look into it. It is all based on reading. There are like 30 books a year or something and they use it for the Grammar and English and Social Studies, etc. Just not what I cared for at all.

I hope you find what you like the best. You can add me as a friend if you want to and feel free to ask me whatever.
So glad you are homeschooling! Keep it up. You will find A LOT of resistance from all around you, but in the end you will be glad you raised your children in the admonition of the Lord and they learned the values you wanted them to learn and not the worlds ways. You are great!

I would just like to say that there is no better place for your child to learn social skills than from a homeschooling community. Find a homeschooling group and get involved. There are sports groups, academic teams, clubs, choirs, theatre groups, etc. Don't buy into the bull of "your child won't be normal socially" that is a bunch of junk. My child is nothing but a social butterfly, who has a full time job in a doctors office, she has had it for a year now, she will only be 18 in August. And the best socially ready for the grown up world kids I have ever met have all been homeschooled.

I use Alpha and Omega Lifepac curriculum....I have also been looking into Sonlight. Sonlight has advisors that help to personalize your childs curriculum and if it doesn't work well for your child they also have a good return policy. I haven't personally tried it yet but it looks great, all of which is faith based. This was my first year as well and I feel very blessed to have the opportunity to teach my children. I don't believe anyone can teach our children better than we can!!!!! God bless and let me know what you find for on line support groups. Hugs!

Homeschool families..........UNITE!

AMEN!!!!!!

We homeschool as well! Have you looked at the Well Trained Mind forums? Great resource there.

We do a mish mash of things here, too - not much of a boxed education kind of mom myself because it drives *me* crazy, but I'll probably change my mind as the kids get older (my oldest is going into 1st).

I homeschooled my daughter until 9th grade. I used strictly Bob Jones curriculum. It was tough on her at first because Bob Jones is a little tough but she got the hang of it and did really well. Once she started Spanish and Algebra I used the dvd's from Bob Jones. It was rather expensive but well worth it.. I was a little bummed when I found out she wanted to go to public schools for High School but the High School here has so many opportunities and classes for her field which is forestry and vet tech. I was a little worried at first about the transition but she did very well and kept her grades in the A's and B's. I was so proud of her. I really liked the Bob Jones teacher editions. It made it fairly easy to teach. Good Luck!!

We've got four kids as well and have been homeschooling for about 13 years or so? Hard to say exactly when we started because they've never been in public school and learn from the moment they're born.

Like others we use an assortment of products. I agree that hands down Apologia is the best for science. We use Abeka for math and grammar as we've found those offer a consistency and constant review that is helpful for our kids. We do also use manipulatives for math such as an abacus, fraction pieces and counting blocks. Kids start out needing concrete objects before they can transition to the abstract. It's very helpful for those who are tactile because they need to interact with the problems they're working. Saxon has a very good reputation for math texts but we didn't care much for the style and sold it on craigslist. I have several friends who swear by Math-U-See but I personally haven't tried it.

I have one dyslexic child and have found that AVKO Sequential Spelling works beautifully for her as well as the other kids. It focuses on word families with immediate correction and reinforcement when words are found to be incorrect. We did Spelling Power for awhile and it worked great for my natural spellers but when I got to the dyslexic one it just didn't. Even my seven year old can do this program and there are different levels.

History we tend to be all about "living books" and don't rely on history books unless we're looking up facts for something that piqued our interest.

My kids all do Taekwondo which includes the regular classes as well as testing in front of large groups of people. We're extremely active in our church and they serve just as much as the adults (especially since my husband and I run the Children's Ministry! My kids are indispensable!) During the school year we are also active in our county's 4-H program. My kids do Olympic Style Rifle Shooting. They are at the gun range every Saturday morning with other kids from the county. The program requires them to create posters to enter into the state fair, give presentations to their peers or adult judging panels, they shoot matches against other kids in their skill classification (not age based!) and they have to read books on gun safety and handling and test on them weekly. My oldest (17) is actually in the process of reading the new books and creating the tests from them. All the other kids in the program will take the test questions she writes.

As you can see my kids are very socially active and involved in programs that require them to get outside themselves and their peer groups to interact with people of all ages. It's one of my favorite things about homeschooling!

For all the other stuff we are pretty interest driven. We mill our own flour and bake all of our own baked goods. Cook mostly from scratch and raise our own chickens. My 14 year old actually bakes all of our bread these days and my 11 year old son just baked some fantastic brownies! We build rockets, we go on hikes, we love museums and basically just exploring the world around us. My three oldest (boy and girls) all knit, crochet or both.

Pretty much whatever we're interested in we pursue. My husband teases me that I'm always obsessed about something! lol Wy do I always write a book when responding to these kind of posts?! Learn your kids styles, don't be afraid to try something and then ditch it if it's not working and be willing to adapt the things you do have to the style your child needs. They are all individuals! My first kid learned to read super easy and just going through her lessons. My second kid is dyslexic and kinesthetic and we had to take breaks during our reading lessons so she could do jumping jacks or run laps just because she's very physical! Even with the struggles we had she's an avid reader and waiting on me to take her to the library.

Okay, I'll shut up now. Finally.

I'm also a homeschool grad, and as a college graduate (and now as a mother, employee, and volunteer) I can say with 100% certainty that homeschooling does not mean lacking any educational, social, or emotional tools to cope with the world. That's an outdated and resoundingly disproven assumption based in either lack of information or lack of experience. I'm shocked when I see people holding on to those ideas. (Unless they're elderly. I cut the over 75 set some slack when it comes to staying up-to-date.) I've chosen to homeschool my children, as have my siblings, and as have many of my friends. We do not homeschool for religious reasons, nor to protect our children from the public schools.

I can't really add to what others have suggested. It does sound like you may enjoy a Well Trained Mind. That's not something that suits our style (we're secular unschoolers, and find that it works really well for us!) but many structured and relaxed homeschoolers enjoy WTM. They also have some great forums, from my understanding.

I do suggest, no matter what your particular homeschooling style is, that you read John Holt's Learning All the Time or Teach Your Own (or both!) -- they are fabulous books, and I can't recommend them highly enough.

www.sonlight.com - hands down the best out there (for us anyway).

Oh yeah I wanted add that I am not worried about public school socilaztion. My son is in tee-ball every year we are going to put him in a winter sport (he wants hockey, I like his teeth so idk), he has friends, we go outside and see the world, he invites kids who he doesn't know at the park to play with him. I think people are crazy to think that a parent can't raise there child to not be the best they can be. I like the idea of not having someone teach my children who prefers one student over the other. I had teachers in high school because I wasn't in sports/cheerleading they would NOT call on me when I raised my hand to answer a question (very true story) it let me down all the time and I became very frustrated. I remember feeling like it wasn't fair and I hated going to high school. My mom Homeschooled my 12th grade. That Being said if my kids ever really wanted to go to public school I will let them try it, I don't want to force them to do something they really dont want to do.