you're right that there's no excuse for a homeschool parent to give a bad education. But putting your kid in public school shouldn't mean you're off the hook, either. I don't like homeshool parents being held to a different standard. A kid graduates homeachool with a ho-hum education and everyone criticises the mom for not providing the best. A kid graduates public school unable to fill out basic forms, and unable to tell you what continent she lives on, and the mom is off the hook because she gave the responsibility to someone else. I don't think that's fair. I know some of the people that have posted their stories on HA. They are still sheltered and they don't know it. They are comparing their lives to their friends in college. I don't deny that they suffered, and there is no excuse for it. But I am surrounded by people in my family and neighborhood that had terrible lives and they're too illiterate to get on the internet and "share their stories." The idea hat you can escape an abusive family situation by simply going to public school would be offensive to many of these people. Public school may have fixed some families that homeschooled instead, but I don't think it would NECESSARILY mean a better education, if your parents don't value academics.

Public school can also be great or terrible. I know a few functionally illiterate adults who have a high school diploma from a public shool. My own husband was public schooled and was gifted. He learned to read early and then they said he couldn't sit atill so they kicked him out of he gifted program. He read ONE book from first grade throuh high school. ONE. When I met him he could hardly speak a complete sentence. He self-educated and taught himself how to speak by repeating audio recordings of sermons from the 1800s. And he taught himself to read by getting a KJV Bible and a dictionary and spending several hours a day studying words. Now he is brilliant. I have another friend who graduated public school, who never read anything besides romance novels, and no math skills beyond 6th grade level, and knows NOTHING about geography, history, science, or grammar. When I was a teen I spent a year assisting in a public school kindergarten class. The colossal waste of time in these kids' lives was what cemented my decision to homeschool in the future. My youngest sibling who was taught late and didn't catch up with academics still had time to develop other skills that are hard to find nowadays. There are parents who care about their kids' education and put them in public school and they get a good education. There areparents who care, and homeschool. There are parents who don't value academics, and some use public school amd some homeschool. But you're not going to read a lot of the public school horror stories on the internet because these people can't spell, type, or earn enough to have access to the computer. And they have no interest in sharing their stories, beacause they're so common. That's why stories of bad homeshool parents don't scare me away from homeschooling. Some families value adacemics and some don't. And that's not something public shool can necessarily fix.

I'm very thankful for having been homeschooled. My mom started out sort of classical. But as time went on she got kind of bored, I think, and burned out. I wish she had more of a social life and more hobbies. As I got older, she became strongly influenced by the Moores, so she backed off on more formal curriculum and focused a lot on reading good literature. She did spelling Charlotte Mason style (although she never heard of her) and that didn't work for me. In fact I hated all dictation; it stressed me out and so I don't do it with my kids. We do a lot of copywork instead, and spelling workbooks. Somehow the Moores convinced my mom that she had ruined my eyes and caused me to need glasses because she tauht me to read when I was 4 years old. So she lived with that guilt to the day she died and it was BS. Now that I'm a mom I can understand that almost anything can cause false mommy-guilt, but still it bothers me that she felt like that. She consequently delayed my younger siblings' reading lessons until way too late and one of them never really caught up to the rest of us. But I think some of that was due to her having burn-out and not putting in the effort to teach that she did wirh me. We used Saxon math for high school and back then there weren't any videos to go with it or anything. I wish she had out-sourced math or used different books, because Saxon doesn't work as an independent study guide. I was able to do well on tests, but I had NO CLUE what I was doing or why, and didn't retain anything after a couple of month out of the textbooks. Most of our language arts was done with McGuffey readers. That worked well, except for spelling which I mentioned. We did Artes Latinae for latin in high school, which worked well. And we did the Learnables for Spanish. Science was pretty dismal until one of my younger siblings got the first Apologia textbook for highschool. I was pretty jealous that I was graduated by then, haha.... but at least now I get to learn decent science with my kids! He best thing about homeschooling was that we always got to investigate with my mom, we all love to learn new things. The worst thing was that my mom needed more supportive friends and more fun in her life. sorry for the typos, I'm on a mobile and it's super hard to edit. Eta: I wished we had better grammar instruction than just copywork and dictation, too.

Yeah that's my formula, haha... I know it sound funny but that's how I figured out a reasonable time to start school for our family so I don't over-schedule the kids and stress myself out. I know it *should* take them 15 minutes to get dressed, but if I plan on 30, I don't get stressed out if something happens. Or it *should* take 15 minutes to eat breakfast...but I plan on 30. I plan a full 12 hours for the kids to sleep, althouh they don't all sleep that long. Then if they get to bed late one night, it doesn't throw school off the next day. I had 6 kids in 7 years so I had to schedule for a lifestyle that can't really be scheduled!

go to bed early.... allow for naps if needed in the afternoon.... this is how I know when to start school:Start from your kids' bedtime and add 12 hours. Then make a list of everything you want to get done in the morning, adding up the time it should take. Double this amount of time and add it to the 12 hours after bedtime. That's the time we can start school!

You could start with Lollipop Logic at that age. We did that for 1st grade and I figure I'll do more formal stuff in middle school grades. I feel my kids get enough logic work in their Singapore math right now.

My favorite is Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding. You read the lesson to yourself, highlight what the main points are, gather the supplies (household items, usually) and have a discussion with the recommended demonstration or experiment. This usually takes an hour a week. We pair it with REAL Science Odyssey, which has pre-made lab sheets and notebooking pages for little ones who can write. We love it, and the kids have retained so much! Science is their favorite subject! I have learned a lot of science, too. You could do one or the other and not both, though. I'm sure you'll get a lot of recommendations; there's a ton of stuff available. I chose BFSU and REAL Odyssey because I feel its gets to the point of science, teaches concepts, little prep for me, can be done with multiple ages at once, and cost effective for a large family.

We have 125 sq ft per person. It takes some creative thinking but it works. We just don't have much privacy, but I think that's , ainly due to having a lot of small kids, and having a bigger house probably wouldn't change it much. I don't know how I would have the time to clean a bigger house! The biggest problems we have are where to put all the books and the laundry. We have bookshelves in every room. Come to think of it, we have laundry in nearly every room, too. Haha My kids seem fine with sharing space but they have always been doing it....so I don't know what it would be like to downsize from something larger.

I do Signs and Seasons with all my kids, (K-3) but I'm not expecting them to remember everything or even understand it all. It's something we wanted to do as a family this year, but because I don't know ANYTHING about astronomy, I can't just take the kids outside and say, hey look.... this is what you're looking at. So I guess we're doing Signs and Seasons more for ME than for the kids right now, haha. I'd love to know what the heck I'm seeing in the sky when we go camping and be able to really enjoy it with the kids. But my 8 and 9 year olds are following along just fine. Jay Ryan has GREAT illustrations to show the concepts. I think the biggest reason they're able to keep up with it is because we recently finished BFSU k-2. And the MP astronomy worksheets help cement in the facts I'd like them to remember. We're going to go through astronomy again in a couple years so I'm not all that worried about whether they get it all right now. We'll do the field activities when they're older. The kids enjoy classical astronomy because it relates more to their everyday lives, with time keeping and navigation, and what they can see without a telescope. I would put the book at a 4th to 8th grade range. But little ones can definitely learn from it. It's got field activities listed in the back for each chapter, but it's a book we just look at together while I read it aloud. Kind of like the elementary Apologia books. Except not as annoying hehe (not to bash Apologia, but their style just doesn't work for me -- although my daughter LOVES reading their books on her own). I would think MP astronomy would work just fine with Apologia Astronomy, or the other resources that were mentioned, like Find the Constellations. But doing MP astronomy alone..... nah

I have it. I'm using it this year with my 8 and 9 year olds as a worksheet-type supplement to Signs and Seasons: Understanding the Elements of Classical Astronomy. MP astronomy is dry and kind of bare-bones. Signs and Seasons is more of a "living book" -- the passion of the author really comes through his writing. It is very thorough, yet doesn't bog down with endless lists of facts. The author is an astronomer and a classically homeschooling dad. The book has very good illustrations. He includes quotes from classical scientists, historians, chirch fathers, scripture, etc. He even teaches etemology. We use it as a read-aloud for the whole family and we all learn from it. But I wanted some worksheets for review and the MP book seems to fit the bill. They're good for memorizing the constellations. I hope that helps!

Hi... I have been reading these forums for years! I have several kids but they are all 3rd grade and under. I was homeschooled as a kid, and enjoy teaching my own kids at home, too. I like TWTM because it sounds so familiar... a lot of it is similar to how I was homeschooled in the 80s. Our family homeschools for academic, financial, religious, and political reasons. Nearly all my homeschool curriculum decisions have been based on the thoughtful reviews and discussions I've found here on this forum. Since I've made it half way through the elementary grades, I feel like I might have something to contribute to the forums myself, now. I also have a lot of questions as we are getting closer to middle school!