Oh yes, the scholarships are the only reason we were able to afford it at all! They are very generous with their financial help and I have been very thankful for that.

For my family I feel like we need to have all the kids in the same place, so either all in school or all at home. I talked to the kids about this today and was kind of surprised with their responses. They both said they liked HS but they also like their Catholic school. They said that they would not be disappointed to start HS again, which surprised me. I assumed, especially my daughter, would be against it. I am not making any decisions right now. I think with the new little one coming this summer it would be better to take another year and think about it. That would put my 4 year old at either entering K or starting K at home. My daughter is going to be in a children's choir this summer with all her HS friends, which will be nice to reconnect in person with some of those families.....we will see. I do not want to make any more rash decisions like I did this past year.

My kids are 8 and 9, so next year they will be entering 3rd and 4th grade. I do love their school but we are currently expecting baby number 5 (other two are 4 and almost 2) so there is NO way we can afford Catholic school long term for everybody. I want to homeschool because of the freedom academically and just time for them to be kids. I think there is so much time wasted in school, they can learn the same things and more at home and still have the free time to wonder and explore. My soon to be 3rd grader- I feel like Homeschooling was a great fit for him, he loved spending so much time reading and he LOVED history, which is not taught in elementary school. He made great friends in our co-op and seemed to really enjoy learning more hands on and less book work. My soon to be 4th grader-It is a little bit harder with her. She is very much into her friendships, but the fact is either way at some point she will have to leave the Catholic school.....there no getting around it. She did well in homeschooling, loved the Classic books I asked her to read, loved narrations etc. But the social aspect was hard for her. So in a nut shell Catholic School is a good fit for us but not financially feasible long term. Homeschooling is also a good fit, but I allowed my emotions to get in the way of myself. Public school is not an option. Now that I say that it is obvious we will be Homeschooling at some point in the future. I need to decide when. There is an awesome Catholic School in our area that is now offering individual classes to Homeschoolers. I think if that program was around this year we would have never stopped HS. It seems to be the perfect fit, school tue. and thur. (classical style, latin, all the good stuff) and then home mon. wen. fri.

Ok, So this past fall we started our homeschool journey, I loved it.....until Dec. I just hit a wall, I get what I call the winter blahs every winter and I was in early pregnancy. Looking back in my grumpiness and tiredness I made a rash decision and put my kids back into school.(this time into our local public school, they had been attending Catholic School). Well that just was not a good choice for us, so after just 7 weeks of PS we put the kids back into our Catholic School. Now this is a really great school, I really do love it. But I feel like I made a serious decision at the wrong time. Pregnant and in my winter blahs was not the time to decide these type of things. So now I totally regret my decision to send the kids back. But I feel like they had such a crazy year it would not be fair to them to take them out of school next year, it just seems like too much turmoil! So I guess I am thinking about what to do for the future.......Should I start to prepare them for HS after this coming year? I really feel like we should be homeschooling! Advice would be appreciated. And I swear I am not a crazy lady :)

We have done it all. Homeschool, public and now we are back in Private school where I feel pretty comfortable with my kids (although to be honest I miss HS in many ways and I have not ruled it out for the future). But I still feel like a few things are lacking. History is my main concern, followed by a rigorous grammar program. I also want to continue with our Latin, we have taken a break to allow them to adjust to being back at a traditional school. These are the main things I hope to focus on in our afterschooling (my kids are 8 and 7). What are your main focuses and why?

1) Yes 2) Yes

FLL 3 days a week WWE 4 days a week

We are in Grand Rapids, There is a great homeschooling community here. We just started HS after a few years in private school and I was very surprised how many opportunities I have found for my kids (tomorrow we are going to the Blandford Nature Center to dissect owl pellets, they also have homeschool classes). The "homeschool building" in Wyoming, just outside of GR is a great place to get lots of info. As far as neighborhoods are you looking in the city or in the surrounding area. Really there are very few places in GR that I would not recommend.

Just wanted to let you all know this OT suggested that we bring him in the have his eye's checked for tracking issues. We will be going next week.

Thanks, I will definitely be looking into those!

So we would love to have our 7 and 8 year old start piano lessons but right now it is just not in the budget. Are there any books etc that somebody could recommend that would at least get them started at home until we can afford the lessons? Both me and my husband know how to read music. My husband did take lessons as a kid but does not remember much. Thanks

We use FFL 2, WWE 2, and Spelling work out for LA. We also do narrations for reading twice a week, history twice a week, and science one or two times a week. I feel narration is HUGE!

We use FFL 2, WWE 2, and Spelling work out for LA. We also do narrations for reading twice a week, history twice a week, and science one or two times a week. I feel narration is HUGE!

Thanks, I will look into that information. He has been receiving speech and OT since he was 2. Can this also have an impact on his ability to read aloud? This is another area that he tends to struggle with.

So my 7 year old has speech apraxia. He is also struggling with writing his numbers and letters correctly. He will occasionally write letters and numbers backwards. But not always. He consistently does it every day but it seems to always be a different number or a different letter he is getting backwards. Could this be related to his apraxia? Any thoughts or tips would be appreciated. This is our first year homeschooling.