i don't know if i'm looking for sympathy, a friendly ear or advice here, but i am feeling like the biggest failure right now! my son had gone to public school from k5 on until last year, halfway through his 8th grade year, we got a call from the counselor's office that he was sitting down there talking about suicide. after almost having a heart attack from shock, we got to the school and realized that he wasn't in fact really suicidal, but just miserable from being bullied. apparently, the whole suicide report is standard procedure for our school district because 4 middle schoolers have killed themselves in the past couple of years. at any rate, he begged us to pull him out, which we did that day and i spent the last 3 months of 8th grade homeschooling him. he was so excited for being homeschooled through high school and declared that he was never going back. i spent so much time with him laying out his whole high school career, so we could make sure that he would have what he needed to go to a great college... he wants to be a neurosurgeon. when we started 9th grade in august, we had a rough time at first just because it was so new and he is a typical teenager with all that comes with the age. we got into a great groove, and then after about a month he started getting resentful because he saw his friends enjoying the whole "high school experience" and by the time we rolled in to homecoming time a week ago, he was miserable once again. this time because he was seeing everyone get ready for the homecoming dance and all the fun social things. he was even invited by a girl, but per the school district rules homeschooled students are not allowed to attend ANY public school functions except attending sporting events. that went over just great :angry: now he has decided that he wants to go back, which is ok since we had told him that either way is fine with us. since no credits will be transferable, i've decided that he needs to get back in january for the second semester as our district does block scheduling and he will be only a couple of credits behind. my question is to all of you, has this ever come up in your lives? if so, did your child regret his decision and want to come back home? my hubby and have talked about it, and both agree that he if succeeds back in public schools great, but if he gets the "school envy" out of his system, he can come back to homeschooling, as long as he gets that he can't flip flop back and forth. thank you so much for listening, and any words of advice would be ever so welcomed...

i'm in walton county, and i just scoured the website for orchard. i don't find georgia a particularly homeschool-friendly state when it comes to the standards set by the georgia board of regents for state colleges admittance. i don't know if having the accreditation would be helpful, but since the georgia accrediting commission is owned by the university of georgia i don't think it could hurt! orchard looks like they use bob jones, abeka and other standard curriculum that you have to purchase, so for me it wouldn't be worth the added expense of paying the school on top of that. we already use bju online for 3 courses and videotext and rosetta stone homeschool, so i feel like we already pay tuition;) also, the math and science requirements seem a little light to me, but i have a future med school-bound son, so we are going more in depth. this is my first year homeschooling, and my family thinks we are nuts and will destroy my son's chances for getting into college, but i know that's just based on their lack of knowledge.

My 9th grader is using the latest RS homeschool version for German has been very successful at it so far. I print off the worksheets for him, including the quizzes and we are following the 36 week lesson plan. If anything, he wants to move at a faster rate, and I have been completely shocked at how fast he has picked up the language. His brain obviously works well with the way RS teaches, and he is doing equally well with speaking, writing, reading and the grammar portion. He has not scored less than 94% on any of the lessons, but I did make a rule that he would have to make at least a 92% to move forward with each lesson. Maybe German is just his thing ;) I would like to point out that this is his first year homeschooling, and took Spanish 1 and 2 in public middle school. He barely scraped through, and I mean BARELY, so traditional textbook learning of language didn't work for him at all. He retained virtually nothing, other than counting and basic skills.

I'll put my 2 cents in on SOS, because I tried it this year for 10th grade World History... it was awful for us! My son, who prefers video methods, absolutely hated it. It is basically a textbook online, and while it does automatic grading, it is no different from reading straight from the book. I uninstalled it after 3 weeks, and have ordered the BJU online courses for History and English.

I only ordered the student text, but there is a test pack available. I've also considered using some of the chapter review questions and make up my own quizzes. Trying to save a buck by not ordering the whole subject kit was not the best idea :lol: Ironically, right after i posted, i sat through the second lab video with my son and found it quite challenging!

My 9th grade son started this Dive cd course last week too, and I am very interested in the responses you might get. We are using BJU 4th edition with it, and my big concern is that there are only quarterly tests, with no quizzes or projects. I'm thinking I might actually order the test packet from BJU to modify and add it, so I can get a better gauge of progress. He has flown through the first 2 lessons and I am hoping that it gets more challenging quickly. I am afraid that I made a mistake by not going ahead and starting him in Biology this year :confused:

As a brand new homeschool mom (!), I decided to go with Videotext Algebra because I felt like my 9th grader would really benefit from the extensive review of the basics in module A. That being said, I'm trying to figure out how to spread out modules B-F over the next 2 years, so he completes Alg 1 & 2 together. I understand it is 180 lessons, so I guess you could complete it in 1 year, but he has struggled with math continuously through public school and I thought this would give him a good chance to cement his skills. Question is, do most people take 2 years using this curriculum? I'm more concerned that he understands it and learns it, than pushing him through to fast, but I wanted to see what you guys thought :)

I'm homeschooling my son, whose in 9th grade, for the the first time ever and since we also live in Georgia, I am very curious also. In my research so far, I'm pretty sure that by law homeschooled kids, or kids who who graduate from unaccredited schools and then enter the university system in Georgia DO NOT qualify for the HOPE scholarship the first year, however, if they attain a certain GPA, they will qualify for it the second year of college and it is applied retroactively. It is particularly interesting to me because the Board of Regents offers an exemption to the public school districts who have lost their accreditation (Clayton County)! I may be totally wrong about this, and if I am, I hope someone corrects me here! :)

I'm a brand new homeschooling mom, who is doing it totally backwards it seems because my son has attended public school through the end of middle school! Due to block scheduling in the high school and the fact that my son would rather chew tinfoil than go back to public school, I decided that we could (and would) homeschool him. I've spent countless hours combing through curriculums and homeschool sites, and am very overwhelmed with all of the information out there. I am confident that I can provide my son with a much better education than he would get at our high school, but I'm still terrified that I'm going to keep him from getting into college because of doing it. I keep waffling back and forth between boxed curriculum and picking and choosing different companies. I need strong science, but more comprehensive math as he is weaker in that area. I've made the poor kid sit through so many sample lessons online, and I know we definitely need a dvd, or online component for him. i know this is very general, but ANY advice or suggestions would be very much welcome. I think I might need some encouragement too;)