Beginning after being in public school for several years?!

Wendy - posted on 02/08/2011

This has been our first year. I have one that would've been in 4th. We chose to recover 3rd grade, because many things were left out due to state testing. My twin boys are somewhere between K and 1st. One is an outside, play ball or in the dirt boy and the other is books and building. So I mix their stuff up. We use Christian Light and love it. We joined a homeschool group. My daughter is very social as well, but it's getting easier for her. If you join a local group you will there are many things for them to do. In fact, my daughter is excited because this Thursday she gets to go to the Father/Daughter banquet.
This is also and adjustment for me because I have always been very involved. PTA president two years and treasurer 1 yr. The younger the kids I think the easier. I had a friend whose kids were older who started in the fall and the started back to public school after XMas because they missed being around other kids.

Tammy - posted on 12/29/2010

Yo've probably already figured out a lot since the post but one thing i would say is to get their input as much as possible as to the way they want to learn then look for stuff that teaches what you want them to learn in that way. I also started out with Switched on Schoolhouse. Now they have Monarch which looks cool too. My daughter might get back into some of that but she wasn't as enthused as I would have hoped in the begining. Currently I use Spell to Write and Ready for reading and spelling, Cursive First for handwriting (helped improve mine too!:)), Apologia for Science is Awesome!, I'm still using LifePac for Bible and History and I'm trying to catch her up on basic math without a curriculum per say.

Since you have older kids they will be more likely to help you with input, so make sure to ask them questions about what they are liking or not liking so you can adjust it when you get the next level.

Just remember, you do not have to replicate the public school in your home! The Charlotte Mason approach is great for a lot of topics. She encouraged the reading of "living books". No "Twaddle". Twaddle is useless reading material. Living books are books on topics written by people who had a passion for that topic. So skip the text book and go find one written by someone who actually liked the subject matter. It will be much more enjoyable reading and you'll learn a lot more!:)

Dawn - posted on 07/28/2010

My daughter wanted to home school, so that helped a lot. I let her have a say in what we do. I don't give her unlimited options of course. I pick out a few things that I would be ok with, and let her have the final say. We also joined a home school group and stay active with other home schoolers. We are going into our 3rd year and she loves it.

Alisa - posted on 04/18/2010

We use K12 curriculum. Our K student was bumped to 1st and he keeps completing work. We pulled him out of public school 1st after only a few months. He was acting like an ADD child but we realized once we decided to homeschool that he was gifted. He was acting out & refusing to do work in school due to boredom. There was other issues with him that caused us to pull him out. Our 1st grade student stayed in the public school for another month but the entire month she said ever day that she wanted to homeschool too. We thought she was too social to like it but she loves it. We have yet to discover a down. We are meeting other HS families, networking. But most importantly we are learning & growing more than we ever could in public school.