The few Aussies I have met I have REALLY liked. If things ever get so bad here in the US that I cannot live here, I will move to Australia.
TRISMS sounds good! I have the site bookmarked. Erin is in fifth grade now, so if I am going to the WTM thing, now would be the time to pick it up. I have been worried that I waited too long to do this. Hubby has finally been talking to people. A friend of his who HS their four kids uses the Seton Catholic cclm, which I don't have any objections to so far, but I would like to supplement it with the WTM. I can't remember if someone here recommended the Seton cclm...is it fairly decent inasfar as solid academics? I have a local friend who used to hs using Seton, and then put her children in the private school where Erin attends. She had to be downgraded from fourth to third, and I don't want to be rude in finding out why. I just wondered if it had to do something with the level of education she had recieved through Seton.
I figure Erin will recieve the religious instruction through our going to church and the wonderful people we have in our tiny little parish. I dont see it a necessity to wrap every academic subject in the cloak of Christianity.
I did Seton part of the time I was homeschooled. It was pretty hard - I had no problem with the transition to private high school. I'd say it was pretty solid. I didn't care for some of the textbooks used, though. Lot of Rod and Staff...those are good, but incredibly boring. It was almost enough to turn me off math for good!
One note: there are a couple of ways to do Seton. They do a semi-correspondence course type of program, where students send all their work to Seton to be graded, OR you can (as I think we did) just have tests graded, and parents do the rest.
It's been awhile, obviously. So I dunno how valid my opinions are anymore...
It's not too late to start homeschooling. It's probably just right because middle school is when kids get bored and get into mischief and don't learn as well as they could. If you want some oversight into what you're doing, look into Clonlara. They may let you do your own curriculum, but oversee the work for grading, etc. Oak Meadow is another group, like Calvert that has it's own books, etc, and you send the work and tests in to be graded. Unlike Calvert, I think it is a secular program.