Calling all homeschooling parents I NEED your help!!

We home school our girls ages 8 and 11. We use a mish mash of curriculum because I haven't found a package that I like everything about. Math- we use Saxon, Science- Apologia, English and Spelling- Rod and Staff, History- The Story of the World and All American History, Plus whatever I find that's interesting along the way. We have never had cause to regret our choice to home school. Our children are well socialized, well behaved, have friends, and are involved in activities through the local HS group. They will have a graduation ceremony when they finish. I wish you much success in your journey!!

Hey there, as for support groups, there are a number on the local level. Also, a great resource to help you sort through curricula, support issues and legal issues is the Home School Legal Defense Association. www.hslda.org

OP, I forgot to mention in my earlier post, do you have access to any used curriculum stores anywhere near you? I know you said you live far from a lot of resources but a good consignment store could be worth a drive. My favorite one is almost an hour from me so I spend time on the internet researching different options. Then I plan a day and go to the consignment store to drop off our items and look at what I'm interested in in person. If you have any homeschool conventions come reasonably close to you try to make one of those as well. If you do find a homeschool group see if you can arrange a "curriculum day" where people bring in a sample of the curriculum they use and tell you what they like/don't like. You could also have a swap that same day since we always seem to have items we just never got around to using or found we didn't like once we started them. Good luck!

OK, thank you so much for taking the time to post that.

I still can't get my head around 'creationism' and people still believing it in this modern world. My children and myself all went to Church schools, but they don't teach or espouse it as a theory what so ever.

Just out of interest as I am fascinated by the home school culture in the US, are you doing this because of your faith and do you teach them science, as in evolution etc and geography, specifically how the world was formed and changed over time etc also do you teach world religions and tolerance for the views of other beliefs etc? I am genuinely interested as home schooling seems to be such a big thing in the states and I am not familiar with it in the same way here.

Our faith has nothing to do with our decision to homeschool. We aren't Christian (my husband is a nontheist, I'm a pantheist). I absolutely teach my children about evolution and the formation of the world, along with the ideas about how the Universe was formed. My girls are both very interested in geology and astronomy, and I enjoy exploring that with them. We attend a UU church, where they learn about different ideas about religion, theology, etc, and we learn about all the different religions and spiritual ideas without saying, "This is the right idea of god; this is the wrong idea of god." Even if my children decide that atheism is their belief, I hope that they will always be able to pull wisdom from spiritual teachings, even if they don't ascribe the source to a Divine Being.

I am lucky to have found a large, active homeschooling group in my area that is inclusive in nature, meaning, among other things, that shared religious views aren't important. There are a large number of humanist, Pagan, atheist, agnostic, UUs and others in the group, as well as Christians. Almost none of the families in this group have chosen homeschooling for religious reasons. It is also not about avoiding "liberalism" in the schools. It's about having a different philosophy about how children learn best, how they develop best, and how to achieve our ultimate goals for our children's future (which is that they are able to identify and achieve their own goals.) For some, it's purely academic; either being able to cater to the needs of a child with learning disabilities, or being able to challenge a child to higher standards than the school would - the ability to individually design the schoolwork to be precisely what a child needs for optimal learning at any given point is a huge selling point for many. For others, it's more about being able to foster that inherent love of learning that children have, to facilitate that - many parents see that in schools, it is often snuffed out, and that people think that's normal and unavoidable, when it is not.

I homeschool because I feel I can provide more opportunities for learning, for exploring, for socializing, and for experiencing the world, than they would be able to have in a classroom. I'm not opposed to classrooms; but I feel that it would hinder my children academically and socially to be in one 180 days a year. Other people obviously have a different experience, and they should do what works for their family -- mileage may vary!

Well...we're not Christian, we're Unitarian Universalist. And we're not homeschoolers, we're unschoolers, BUT I thought I'd answer anyway. lol I can't help you with curricula, since we don't use much and what we do use isn't faith based, but my favorite online homeschool groups are on CafeMom. Other areas of CM can be pretty negative sometimes, but the moms on the homeschooling lists I'm part of on there are *SO* helpful and kind. I've been on a lot of homeschooling lists over the years and those are some of my favorites. Nothing beats a good local homeschooling group though. I can't imagine trying to go it alone without the support of my local group.

We're a UU unschooling family too! :flowerforyou:

Hi! I've been homeschooling all 3 of my children straight through. My oldest will be a senior this year, so it's going to be an exciting year for us. I have never used one particular curriculum because all of my children are different. We've used Easy Grammar, Apologia science, Abeka, Bob Jones, Horizons Math, Notgrass for History, Chalkdust for highschool math (Most of the major Christian Companies) There is sooooo much out there it is easy to get overwhelmed. Thankfully we have two companies in town that carry just about everything so I can look at things before I buy them. If you have any specific questions feel free to message me-I think I've tried just about everything out there at one time or another!:flowerforyou: