Posted on 06/28/2006 4:20:41 PM PDT by Tired of Taxes
Free Republic Homeschoolers Forum 2006-2007
A spot for homeschoolers on Free Republic to share information
First, a big, hearty CONGRATULATIONS to all those students who graduated this year! May you enjoy happiness and success in all of your endeavors.
For those of us still working toward that goal, this forum has been a wealth of information. News articles and legislative alerts keep us up-to-date here. Many thanks to Jim Robinson and Free Republic!
Last summer, we shared homeschooling advice with each other on this thread.
All of the books, curricula, and resources mentioned on that thread as well as a few mentioned elsewhere on Free Republic - have been carried over to this one. (See the list in post #2).
Please feel free to post more information to help other homeschoolers and share more advice with each other right here on this new thread.
Best wishes for all of you and your families this year!
Yes, it is the math from Saxon Publishers. It is very no frills and very thoroughly explains everything. You can basically teach yourself math using it. My kids did and came to me when they didn't understand something and I finally learned all that math that I didn't get in high school.
Funny thing is, the school district we used to homeschool in was so impressed with the home schoolers standardized test math scores and noticed that most of them used Saxon Math, so they looked into it and started using it themselves. Their math scores went up, too.
The Homeschooling Revolution
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0967043069/sr=8-1/qid=1152586167/ref=sr_1_1/002-1121106-3220034?ie=UTF8
We are using the Key To series as well. My son is doing it without my help completely. What I love about the workbooks is how intelligent the problems and groupings of problems are. Instead of the boring workpages of typical texts, they start off easy and then put in problems that really show you that you've learned the material. Not much repetition so you can move ahead quickly. They aren't boringly predictable and they make math interesting.
I don't know if this will be of help to you, but I thought that I'd ping you anyway.
You might want to go to the HSLDA website to find out more www.hslda.org
Also, there might be some links to homeschool parents and support groups in your area at the HSLDA site. If not, try a google search. I've noticed that homeschoolers tend to rely on each other for advice, team teaching, etc.
You might start here: San Diego Home Schooling.
Just wanted to take a moment and thank all of you for adding your input to this thread. This list of resources has become a terrific resource itself.
"Thank you" in advance to everyone else who adds information from here on, and best wishes to those of you just starting out!
Just marking this thread for later research.
Thank you so much! I'll get started right away. I didn't expect to not be able to find a school I was comfortable with, so now I feel pressed for time. Thank you for this information!
bookmark
Does anyone have suggestions for a good science curriculum? I've been looking into BJU's science programs - has anyone used that?
Hey girl!! How are you doing? We're getting ready to leave MA and move back home to MS. Our daughter is just finishing up her high school work, and will be going to college in FL this fall. We'll only have our youngest son to homeschool through his last two years of high school, so he'll be portable as we're making the move back South.
For those new to homeschooling, and even veterans of it, "The Homeschooling Revolution" is a great overview of the movement!! I have a copy that was signed by the author at a MA homeschooler's convention several years ago. ;o)
BTTT
homeschool ping. Amen
One thing I found, though, is for the lower grades, like 1-3, is that just getting books out of the library on different science topics is usually just as good as what you'd get if you spent a lot on official curriculum.
The following is strictly my opinion based on our experience teaching our kids, but at those grade levels, I found the emphasis should be on teaching them the three R's. I think it's more important to teach them the basics and give them the tools to use so they can learn the rest later in life. If they get these nailed down young, the rest will come. Anything they learn in first to third grade, they will relearn from fourth on anyway. Also, young children tend to be very concrete thinkers and have trouble with more abstract thought which includes things like time and society, government, etc. So what we did was cover primarily science that could be done with experiments that young children could do hands on, and for history, we covered holidays as they came up and went to museums a lot. There is a tremendous amount that kids can pick up this way, including the use of library books, that make it better than using a curriculum. We also used Moody science videos, which can be pretty good, although you have to be careful which ones you buy. Some of the ones we got were so dated that they looked like the ones used when I was in school.
As an aside, we live in NY, which has pretty rigorous regulations, and they didn't have any problem with what we did.
Found out that eBay will no longer allow the sale of teachers editions of textbooks. Some discussion as to whether "religious" books are allowed, but someone had their Abeka teachers edition pulled. Puts me at a quandry, I use Ebay to buy my math books.
Hmmm... That's curious.
My first thought was: Maybe they don't want to get into trouble for selling teacher's books with answer keys to school students. But, if they're pulling the homeschool books, too... well, I hope they just made a mistake. Otherwise, they're going to lose some business. There are a lot of homeschoolers who buy books on Ebay.
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