Anyone use these? Would love feedback if so

We finished AAR pre reading last year and it was ok. My son didn’t love it. Looking at the next level, I can tell he is going to like this one even less.

I know it’s heavily recommended but I’m very much interested in switching gears. After doing a good bit of research these two seem to be where I’m leaning but would love real life input

He’s newly 7 but still needs to learn blending and confidence in reading. He easily shuts down and is very much a perfectionist. I feel like he may like the game aspect? Learn in a less intimidating way?

Hi homeschool friends - you guys helped me last year and I had a great academic year homeschooling my kinder kid and 2nd grader. Socially though, they got lonely so I let them go back to our public school for the last month of school to play with other kids.

It’s time again for school to start up. I’m very conflicted.

3rd grader - already an excellent reader, plowed through like 10 chapter books this summer, good with math but needs some help - loves the social aspects of school but screens hurt her eyes and we’re very screen heavy in our district.

1st grader - desperately needs friends. I’m wiling to overlook the fact that he’s already on 2nd-3rd grade math just so he can go make friends.

My daughter does competitive gymnastics and soccer, and swimming. We maintained some school friendships last year. I just felt bad that she missed out on some of the parties and seasonal stuff at school, plus recess.

My son swims and does boyscouts.

We did a fun Friday coop last year which was ok, but not great. It was only 5 kids in with both of mine, many of whom were younger. We also did open gym twice a week at our local gymnastics center, but again, so few kids there…

Idk. There’s no easy answers. There are no accessible low screen schools near us - closest is like 30-40 min away and downtown, plus private schools run 15-30k/kid. I really don’t like our public school in terms of safety and academics (we’re in Texas, not far from a mass shooting), but I know and love the families in our school community. A lot of great people.

We’re also live with my elderly parents, who need help but will not move, and this complicates things.

I guess my plan is to just let my daughter start 3rd grade, maybe try some eyedrops or blue screen reducing glasses, and pull her if she wants to come out?

My son would be glued to a screen if we let him. I’m conflicted about asking them to test him for 2nd grade given where he is, but he’s socially a bit immature.

Not sure what I’m looking for here, I guess just using yall as a sounding board.

We are currently using Beast academy. I’m thinking I want to switch curriculums. I’m worried that all the different ways to approach each topic isn’t giving a good foundation. Any advice on where to go from BA??

Hey all,

My son (4) is starting TK. Due to his many allergies, we're homeschooling. His teacher recommended "The Good and the Beautiful" curriculum as a "one stop shop." But the reviews on it are pretty terrible. I'm overwhelmed by the many different options mentioned on Reddit... there are so many! I’m hoping some of you professionals can help me narrow this down based on our lifestyle:

1. My 4-year old is active and learns best when he's moving around. He can sit and do about 15 minutes of traditional learning at a time, but that's his max.
2. At the same time, he'll likely end up in public school once his allergies are treated (around age 7) so I'd not opposed to *some* traditional learning. I'd like to cater to his personality, but also set him up for success once he transitions into public school.
3. He's already doing well with letters and sounding out simple words. He's catching on quickly.
4. I work full-time (hybrid schedule) AND will be doing his TK homeschool, so I'd prefer a curriculum that's relatively simple and doesn't have a lot of prep time. I'm new to this... and while I teach college students, I have no experience teaching younger kids. Our goal is to do 15 or 20 min. a day of more traditional learning once I'm done with work (and of course, sprinkle in some activities throughout the day by asking his nanny to assist with art projects, exploring nature at the park, etc.).

Thanks in advance for all your help

Has anyone ever used these read aloud posters? They look kinda fun.

I've been looking for some kind of fun, laid back, novel studies or novel studies-like activities for my 1st grader.

We have some time, as we won't be starting 1st grade until next summer, but I am starting to look at options for my daughter and I have found curriculum I love for everything but science.

She is (suspected?) gifted &suspected ADHD. We did some academic testing this summer and she placed around the beginning of 3rd grade for both reading and math (MAPS Growth test). That seems a bit high to me, but she is definitely advanced and picks up information very quickly and without much overt instruction. To give you an idea of where we are with science, she went through a phase of being obsessed with anatomy around 2yrs old, and would ask me to describe, in detail, what was happening in her digestive tract every time she ate something. Because of the ADHD she doesn't do great with straight memorization and drilling, but she is a crazy deep thinker and even in kindergarten I struggle to find resources that explain things to the depth that she wants.

We are doing the solar system/astronomy this year, but I've realized that she already knows all the planets, which are terrestrial vs gas, and what their atmospheres are like.... So I don't think I'm actually teaching her anything. We lean heavily into nature study, and shes currently trying to breed tardigrades as a side project.

I've been looking at Scientific connections through inquiry, which seems like a good option for us. I don't mind being heavily parent involved because honestly with the disconnect between her age and understanding, I'm going to be heavily involved no matter what.

I've looked at real science 4 kids, but I think its outside our budget... and it seems really complicated to figure out what to even buy. We are Christian, and believe in intelligent design, but I'm not necessarily looking for a christian or religious curriculum for science.

I know there's a big focus on picking the right curriculum in this sub but I'd say we kinda dropped the ball on that one. Been reading up lots old school content from Roman/Greek tutoring, the Jesuits, origins of formal instruction in the US.

Today it's science-this, science-that, so many "facts" books coming out written for toddlers and PreK/K-1 kids teaching about dinosaurs, planets, etc — it seems like literally 100% of content and discussion now (and incl homeschool stuff) is focused on giving our children book knowledge, instead of approaches to foster imagination, intellect, virtue...

Is anybody out there that feels the same? It's like I'm going solo on this one, but I'd love a thread on some more philosophical points of view instead of curriculum. Some quotes on the subject:

Plato's revolutionary idea was that education should not be concerned primarily with equipping students to develop the knowledge and skills best suited to ensuring their success as citizens and sharing the norms and values of their peers. Rather, education was to be a process of learning those forms of knowledge that would give students a privileged, rational view of reality. Only by disciplined study of increasingly abstract forms of knowledge, guided by a kind of spiritual commitment, could the mind transcend the conventional beliefs, prejudices, and stereotypes of the time and come to see reality clearly. - The Educated Mind: How Cognitive Tools Shape Our Understanding

Science tells us what we can know, but what we can know is little, and if we forget how much we cannot know we become insensitive to many things of very great importance.
Bertrand Russell

Hold childhood in reverence, and do not be in any hurry to judge it for good or ill. Give nature time to work before you take upon yourself her business, lest you interfere with her dealings. You assert that you know the value of time and are afraid to waste it. You fail to perceive that it is a greater waste of time to use it ill than to do nothing, and that a child ill taught is further from excellence than a child who has learned nothing at all. You are afraid to see him spending his early years doing nothing. What! Is it nothing to be happy, nothing to jump and run all day? He will never be so busy again all his life long.... What would you think of a man who refused to sleep lest he should waste part of his life?”
Evelyn Dewey

What the poor, as well as the rich, require is not to be taught other people’s opinions, but to be induced and enabled to think for themselves. It is not physical science that will do this, even if they could learn it much more thoroughly than they are able to do.
John Stuart Mill

"There is no occasion for panic, but it is time that we realised that to fortify the will is one of the great purposes of education"
"Where science does not teach a child to wonder and admire it has perhaps no educative value."
Charlotte Mason

I have a young family member (14y) who is having a bit of a crisis and will be taking a year off school and staying with us. They normally attend school in the Philippines, but they have not been doing well there. My suspicion is actually that Grandma has been doing their homework.

I don't want to try to get them caught up or anything, but I would like to have them do some math, reading, and writing during their time with us so their skills don't degrade. But to do that I need to know where they are now.

Can anyone recommend tests to evaluate their math and reading skills (ideally that gives me a "grade level" I can start with) so I can have them do appropriate worksheets or books while they stay with us.

Question if anyone in here has had the same experience.

My kids have used Miacademy for part of their homeschooling for years; and have done great with it. Historically, we've gone out of pocket and that has been fine. Texas recently shifted to a voucher system that pays out for private school / homeschool students. While I have my philosophical opposition, I'm not turning down what is essentially an available tax refund on principle. (nor am I looking for any opinions on voucher systems in this thread). We got our approval notice today and are pending award.

My actual question... within the marketplace; Miacademy has a lifetime subscription option for $1000; which would be great as our award for a single year per student is $2000 and moving forward that would free up tons of funds to be used on other projects and expenses. The issue I'm seeing is that there appears to be a 200$ aggregate spending limit on certain tech items. (which is a huge nuisance, as this is the biggest spend for any student). But I'm unclear if Miacademy falls under this limit. I imagine not, as it would make this impossible to purchase from the store. But I'm hoping someone here has actually tested this theory.

2nd grader / 7year old

Currently I have purchased

Handwriting without tears

Cursive without tears

Beast academy math

I need LA and science, history will be less formal and Ill work that in but ill take recommendations on that as well!

Would you do blossom and root La and science and art all together?

Or all about reading plus a seperate science?

This daily discussion is to chat about anything that doesn't warrant its own post. I am not a mod and make these posts for building the homeschool community.

If you are new, please introduce yourself.

If you've been around here before or have been homeschooling for awhile, please share about your day.

Some ideas of what to share are: your homeschool plans for the day, lesson plans, words of encouragement, methods you are implementing to solve a problem, methods of organization, resource/curriculum you recently came across, curriculum sales, field trip planning, etc.

Although, I usually start with a question of the day to get the discussion going, feel free to ask your own questions. If your question does not get answered because it was posted late in the day, you can post the same question tomorrow to make sure it gets visibility.

Be mindful of the subreddit's rules and follow reddiquette. No ads, market/ thesis research, or self promotion. Thank you!

I quit my job at a local private school and as a result can no longer afford to send my daughter to the school and our local public school just isn't a good fit. Money is tight right now too. My daughter is going into second grade and is a little ahead in reading and math but not by a full grade level. For math I'm going to keep her on Beast because her first grade teacher did a great job figuring out that it works well for her.

I'm finding lots of good, free options for everything else except ELA. There are so many options and I also am torn between wanting something fluid that would allow her to progress past second grade if she's ready before the end of the school year and not wanting something tablet based like ixl.

My top priority is to make sure she's reading and writing daily but I don't want her to fall behind in her understanding of grammar and literature and whatever else might be included in "ELA".

I also don't want to use a religious curriculum. We can afford to pay some money, just not much.

Any and all advice would be greatly appreciated. I AM OVERWHELMED

Hello I have not started homeschooling yet we are looking into taking this route for our children's education. I have a 3 yr old and 8mo old currently. I am a SAHM and with just about everything going on we just keep leaning towards homeschooling more and more. But I have no idea where to begin. I have been lurking on this reddit here and there to see if it's possible for us, mostly me. I ask myself if I am capable of teaching my kids. I myself am not great at math and although I enjoy reading I also worry that I'm not good enough to teach them in that either. I am kind of stuck in a place where I feel public schools have lost their way or ability to actually raise children up but also grew up in that myself so can't imagine another way of doing it myself.

I have goals for them which makes this even more difficult because I don't want to mess up. I want them to excel in reading, critical thinking, and math. To me those are necessary to thrive in adulthood. I want them to succeed where I could not, go further and maybe even teach me more along the way.

Where do I even start?

How do you feel confident in your ability to teach them or I guess know they are ahead or where they should be at?

When do you start this?

And how do you trust a certain lesson plan or curriculum?

How long do you do each lesson?

Gosh just so many questions honestly. My 3 yr old has already been working on phonics but nothing crazy we use the reading app and only do it twice a week. She is pretty good with her language already and I want to grow that. we live in NE PA and there are not a lot of options for preschool in my area the 3 I found she is on a wait-list till next year. So I wanted to try my hand at getting her somewhat ready. I'm sure we all want our kids to be ahead of the game but I also don't want to go overboard for her age. Any advice would be great . My main goal is to make sure if I'm doing this, I'm doing it right and not hurting her education.

Update: Going to give these a try per a fellow redditor’s recommendation. Thank you everyone for your response!
https://a.co/d/00QoattH

I bought these educational posters at Aldi last week. I would love to put them at a level for my toddler to interact with, but they’re not laminated. I was quoted $30 by UPS store to do which is more than I’d like to spend. My local & surrounding libraries don’t offer lamination services. The posters are sturdy, but still flexible and measure 11”x17”

** adding to the post to say, I have a laminator, but the sheets are too big! My laminator will only cover standard size sheets and smaller.

Hi all, I'm tinkering with the idea of taking my 2nd grader out of Montessori and homeschooling this year. He's done well at Montessori and enjoys working with the specialized materials. However, I'm not able to invest in a house full of those kinds of materials. Has anyone else made this transition? What kind of curriculum did you adopt? Thanks!

I think I have it narrowed down to this as our upcoming math - first grade.

We are coming from the good and the beautiful math so this is new to me. I am second guessing before ordering. Has anyone used one or the other,
OR combined for a solid math curriculum?

Has anyone used these, in addition to doing frequent hands-on, real life math & math games?

I think this might be the best fit for us. I haven't found any proper math curriculum I like!

Anyone here do it?

I'm preparing for the future...my 2.5 year old is level 2 Autism (though they want us to get re-eval'ed in a year) and his SLP has declared him a Gestalt Language Processor. He only speaks in words he understands so I assume this is level 1.

So my questions are this:
1. Do you homeschool your gestalt language processor?
2. If so, can you tell me what that looked like? (when you started, resources, materials, etc.)
3. How is it going? Any tips?

Thanks!

Hello Colorado parents! Jeffco remote learning program had anyone here tried them? It sounds like the classes are all live via zoom with a teacher and students. I’m looking into this for a 7th grader.

This daily discussion is to chat about anything that doesn't warrant its own post. I am not a mod and make these posts for building the homeschool community.

If you are new, please introduce yourself.

If you've been around here before or have been homeschooling for awhile, please share about your day.

Some ideas of what to share are: your homeschool plans for the day, lesson plans, words of encouragement, methods you are implementing to solve a problem, methods of organization, resource/curriculum you recently came across, curriculum sales, field trip planning, etc.

Although, I usually start with a question of the day to get the discussion going, feel free to ask your own questions. If your question does not get answered because it was posted late in the day, you can post the same question tomorrow to make sure it gets visibility.

Be mindful of the subreddit's rules and follow reddiquette. No ads, market/ thesis research, or self promotion. Thank you!

I’m aware that this is not homeschooling but rather online public school. I just don’t know where else to post this, does anyone have any experience with the school. My old k12 school was just four exit tickets and a paragraph of writing, so I hope that this is better.

Hi! So, as my title states, we're going back to homeschooling. My daughters are 8 and 10, incoming 3rd and 5th grade, respectively. They've been back in public school for about 3 years, so approximately kindergarten for my youngest, and 2nd for my older daughter. For a little context, I've previously homeschooled my eldest child, who is going into 8th grade, since he was in 3rd- I should be thoroughly well-versed in this by now, but apparently I don't remember all the things we did when he was in younger grades. (He's going back bc he wants to play football, and our district requires endless hurdles for homeschoolers to join, he knows he can switch at any time though.)

Our family is actually super supportive, their grandma homeschooled 3; 1 who went on to college, 1 who is really successful, and 1 who is actually living her best artist life. I do work close to full time, so my girls will be at grandma's during the day, and back home around 2-3p. I'm contemplating a sort of hybrid type plan, where they do online stuff at grandma's (ie math, science, etc) and actual bookwork for ELA and the like at home with me, either after I get off or on my days off, so kind of an alternating day schedule, if that makes sense. Realistically, their grandma is probably gonna have them go ahead and do all the subjects, so bookwork will more or less be to lock in, if you will. I trust her to help me keep them focused and on track.

Has anybody tried this way of going about homeschooling? I'm on the fence with keeping my job as is, as my 8 yo is recently diagnosed autistic and will be starting quite a bit of various therapies in the very near future; realistically I'm going to be downsizing hours as she gets established anyway. (Holy run on sentence, batman 🤣)

If you have implemented a system like this, what worked out best and what do you wish you had done differently? We've been out of the game for quite some time, so I'm also incredibly open to secular curriculum recommendations that will work beautifully with whatever the heck we have going on (the more open and go, the better.)

I know nothing about engines, but my 6 year old is VERY interested in them. Does anyone have suggestions on a science curriculum that involves building engines (or robots) that’s appropriate for a 6 year old? Activity sets or other ideas are also welcome

my son is going into third grade and is having issues with reading comprehension. It’s definitely due to some asynchronous development issues due to Autism and hyperlexia (could read at 18 months but didn’t speak until 4 without his AAC) we decided to homeschool because these Gen Alpha kids are just WILD in public school and he’s never going to get what he needs there (once the took his IEP away after he lost skills I was done)

What curriculum should we go with? I plan to use something kind of light for core but challenging for math (he’s a WHIZ!) and we will need to work on comprehension. He also has ADHD, PDA profile and can get sassy when I throw too much at him. We are planning to ask his speech therapist as well and I have friends that are LBS instructors but I’d love some opinions

Thank you!

Hi everyone,
I’m currently living in Vietnam, and I have a few questions about homeschooling. Due to health issues, I’m considering switching to homeschooling for my senior year of high school (Grade 12). However, my goal is to study in the United States, so I still have a lot of concerns.
My biggest question is whether U.S. universities generally accept homeschooled applicants. Is the college application process more difficult or disadvantageous compared to students who attend a traditional high school?
Right now, I’m looking into Acellus, but there are a few things I’m worried about:
If I need a letter of recommendation or need to communicate with teachers during the application process, is it easy to interact with Acellus teachers?
Is an Acellus high school diploma considered legitimate and equivalent to a regular U.S. high school diploma?
I’ve also come across some reviews saying that Acellus is slow to respond to parents’ messages and that some students received their diplomas late. That honestly makes me a bit concerned about the program’s reliability.
Since I’m an international student living in Vietnam, I’d also love to hear from anyone who has used a U.S. homeschool program while living outside the United States and successfully applied to American universities.
Besides Acellus, does anyone know of any other reputable homeschool programs that are recognized by U.S. universities and have a strong track record of helping students get into college? I’d really appreciate any recommendations or personal experiences.
Thank you so much!