Okay, that was actually supposed to go to Meriwether.

To the last poster: ease up on yourself. You have a lot to get done without spending 6 hours a day on school. I had days like this before I starting using the Latin-Centered Curriculum method. My children do the three core subjects every day in the same order: Latin (phonics until they are reading well enough to handle starting Latin), Math, and Handwriting for the younger ones or Composition for the older. Then Monday is Religion, Tuesday is Literature, Wednesday is History, Thursday is Geography, and Friday is Art/Music. They also have memory work they go over every day. I have a highschooler working independently, then 4th, 2nd, and Kindergarten grades, as well as a fairly demanding-two-year old. Everyone but my highschooler is done by lunchtime, and I am still sane. I promise you they are learning everything they need by doing school in the morning and having plenty of time for reading, writing their own little books, making stuff, and helping with the household in the afternoons. We also school around the year so we don't have that awful review period at the start of each year. We take off a week or two as needed, but never get out of the habit of learning. Cut back so you don't burn out.

I let my children vote on a name after we read stories about many different saints. So we are St. Ignatius of Loyola. Except my teenage daughter says she is attending Sacred Heart, which is a small (one student) all-girl Catholic high school that is considering going co-ed in the next few years (when her brother starts ninth grade). Here is where the name comes in handy: When I would use my teacher discount card at Borders or other stores, the cashiers would always ask for the school name. When I would say that we homeschooled, their attitudes immediately changed to being skeptical. Once I started answering, "St. Ignatius of Loyola," the attitude was gone. They assume we are a Catholic school with which they are unfamiliar. And Texas law says that we are a private school. Texas is a great place to homeschool!

I agree that visiting the publisher's website and reading through their "About Us" or "Mission Statement" is a good technique. It has stopped me from buying many books that would have taught things that are contrary to our faith (Catholic). I know there is a website called the Catholic Homeschooling Pit List, where other Catholic homeschoolers send in the titles of books and explain the problematic content. Is there an equivalent list for your faith? I now try to buy all of my materials from only a few companies I know I can trust.

I agree that you have to watch out with g/t kids trying to push themselves too fast and feeling like they have to be perfect or quit the game altogether. I have a g/t ds14 who had only the basic phonics at age 4 and took off reading on her own. She says she can't remember not being able to read, and she is a spelling whiz. I have a non-g/t ds7 who did the same thing. I taught him phonics, but he is too impatient to sound out words. He only seems to guess at words when he is reading aloud. No problems with reading comprehension. I think that he is going to pick up a lot of this through simple repetition, because he always has his nose buried in a book, reads a few years above grade level, and can tell you all about what he read. I have known many people who lacked phonetic instruction and still read and learn without problems. I also have an autistic ds11 who taught himself to read at 4 using only sight words, because he could not have learned phonetically. (This is very common among autistic children.) Phonics may be the ideal, but some kids find a way around it.

My daughter is 14 and in her first year of BSA Venturing. She loves it!! They have been camping, kayaking (both the Caddo and the Rio Grande),hiking, skeet shooting, and orienteering. They also attended hunter education safety (which was fascinating for those of us whom have never hunted) and got to teach adult leaders at Philmont. Because we have a large family and a special needs child, league sports has not been a good fit for us. Boy Scouts has given us the most bang for our buck. We have one in Venturing, two Webelos Scouts, and a Tiger Cub Scout. Dd 4 will probably do American Heritage girls and then switch over to Venturing when she is 14. Ds 2 will follow behind the others. I wouldn't want my child to attend any college that had a problem with BSA. Before considering Girl Scouts, please look into how they are restructuring the program. (I was a leader for a few years.) They are phasing out earning badges in favor of "Journeys." My dd quit at twelve, because she said it was not much learning of skills, but a lot of cookies and self-esteem. One of the things she likes about Venturing is that the leaders are advisors and chaperones, but the crew is the one planning everything, setting budgets, making reservations, getting certified for things like scuba, first aid, etc...

@Faithr: I also worry that others will believe he is a representative of Catholicism. It is because I am Catholic that I could not continue with CLAA. The Church has never said that families must chant the Liturgy of the Hours or raise children in a monastic lifestyle. (But because his family does not attend daily Mass, he thinks that it might make children become too comfortable at church and not realize it is sacred. Find me a priest who will back him up on this. Daily Mass is so worthwhile, imho, even if you can't go every day.) We can embrace detachment and still expose our children to much that is beautiful. I don't remember the Magisterium telling us that any literature not written by canonized saints is a waste of time. When someone begins to tout their success as proof of their rightness, I get suspicious. The MEEK inherit the earth.

You have to do what works for you and for your family. Sometimes we overcompensate, because we don't want anyone to think that we are slacking off. School is an artificially created environment, and a lot of stuff that has to be carefully presented there just happens naturally at home. You don't need a play kitchen if your kids are working in a real kitchen. You don't need a learning center with math manipulatives if your child is counting the sorting and stacking all the cans in your cupboard. You don't worry about worksheets where they tell you what happened first, second, and last, because you are listening to them. A teacher in a school does not have time to let every kid retell a story in the proper order. You definitely relax more with each child, just like potty training, because you know that you have succeeded in the past. And you tailor your program to their abilities. Kindergarten gets done whether you have one hour or six hours to spend on it. It gets done with carefully chosen resources or with some paper, crayons, and a library card.

Because we speak English every day, it is almost too familiar for kids to really study. But cracking the Latin code is like a game. You have to figure out what all those endings mean, because going by the order of the words doesn't give you any clues. There are some differences between Latin and English grammar (e.g., the use of the subjunctive), but Latin books explain them. I don't have my children study a separate English grammar program. They also don't do a separate vocabulary program, because between the history vocabulary, literature vocabulary, and latin derivatives, I think it is pretty well covered.

While one can certainly use the CLAA program and stay off of the forums, they should be aware that Mr. Michael views the fact that people are staying as affirmation of his rightness. Following the link that Elizabeth posted will take you to a forum post of his in which he says: "The WTM crowd is as insane a bunch as you'll find anywhere--you have Catholics, Protestants and atheists sharing ideas...sounds helpful." This would seem to contrast with John Paul II: "The unity of all divided humanity is the will of God." In a free market economy you vote with your dollars. And no, Iwona, I don't think I offend easily. I think he is easily offensive.

95% stay = another Logical Fallacy - Appeal to Popularity If the director actually has posted on his website a response to "What's WRONG with the CLAA? Problem #9: William Michael is a Jerk," does this say anything about his people skills? Has SWB had to post a response to "Susan Wise Bauer is a Jerk"? Of course families can choose to leave. They can even get a refund minus 3% within 60 days of requesting it. But many homeschoolers will sign up for the classes and only then visit the forums. The online lessons were okay. Not earth-shattering, just okay. It was the opinions of the director and his followers expressed in the forums that caused me to leave. Before they enroll, parents might like to know what he thinks about the "homeschool subculture" and the supposedly inferior education being taught by anyone who is not following the CLAA program. My initial post on this thread advised any parents considering the CLAA to read through the forums FIRST.

Also factor in all the added healthcare costs from putting your kids into school. My homeschooled children occasionally get colds from places like the library. My one healthy-but-autistic child who is in the public school system brings home vomiting viruses, flu, pinkeye, pinworms, strep, etc... We figured that the case of strep throat he brought home that spread through our family cost us at least $500 one month in co-pays, lab fees, and antibiotics. And that was with scrubbing everything in sight, tossing toothbrushes away every few days, buying each child their own toothpaste to avoid spreading, and having each person use an expensive antibiotic ointment in their nostrils (advice from an ENT) to make sure they did not catch it again. It took a whole month to get all eight of us healthy again.

I do the same things!!! It works.

My kids have all wanted to attend school at some point. They thought it was going to be just like Arthur. Fortunately my oldest, ds14, went to elementary school for three years (3rd-5th, a good neighborhood school, safe, but she learned almost nothing), and she tells them all how it really is. Ds 9 decided after a few months of first grade that the kids were too mean and those buses aren't so fun after all. Now they love the fact that when the other kids are stuck in school is when we are out on nature trails and going on field trips. (Summers here are too hot to do much.) Plus their school work is usually finished by lunch time and there is no homework. If I had it to do over again, I'm not so sure I would let my daughter go to school. She picked up some bad habits, like coasting along because the expectations were low. Being involved in the public school system eats up a lot of family time with homework, fundraising, after-school events, fundraising, never-ending requests of things that need to be sent in, special projects, fundraising... I think I am getting a better return on my time investment with homeschooling. And I don't have to sell cookie dough or wrapping paper.:)

My favorite from the list has to be The Tale of Despereaux. I had a friend who worked as a manager for Barnes and Noble and she got a free hardcover advance copy, signed by Kate DiCamillo, at one of their company conventions. My daughter and I both devoured it over the weekend. The next time I saw my friend I told her it was sure to win the Newbery. What a shame the movie is almost nothing like the book. I thought "Rules" was wonderful, because it accurately portrayed what it is like to be the sibling of an autistic child. (I'm the mom to an awesome autie.) And Chasing Vermeer, The Wright 3, and The Calder Game all held my attention.