Did you like your Homeschool Curriculum? What's the best one

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Hello students,

I hope that it is OK if I post here. I'm not sure if it is (since I'm a parent) but I'd love your input.

I'm the Mom to 2 beautiful intelligent AD/HD Aspie children (First Grade boy and pre-K girl). To make a long story short, I had to pull them from school and home school them.

There are so many different types of curriculum out there it's mind-nimbing. I was wondering (from a minor's or young adult's point of view) what worked best for you? What really spoke to you and got you excited to learn? Was there a certain brand or type of math, or English, or total curriculum that seemed to work best for you? Is there one that you wish you could have used but your family didn't? Conversely, is there a type or brand of curriculum that I should stay away from?

My kids are really into technology. Anyone use Ipad/ ipod touch/ or iphone apps as your curriculum or know of some you'd recommend?

Thanks so much. I really appreciate and value your opinions!

I ended up going to Christian school for elementary school, and I didn't know I had Aspergers or anything at the time, but the teachers worked, for the most part, very well with me. I had a general feeling of differentness, but yeah. The curriculum I used was Beca, and for math, reading, English, and science (despite being Creationist, which some object to) the curriculum was hard as hell, but I'm thankful for it. I went to public school and was like "WTF is this?!" at how easy everything was. I was diagramming sentences down to prepositions and articles in like 4th grade, then I get to public school and we're diagramming them down to, like, nouns and verbs, in 7th. So, I don't know if I'd call the memories of it fond, but it's a homeschool/Christian school curriculum, and I used it. Basically, like, imagine oldschool school books and oldschool school standards, it was that.

Honestly, this is going to sound terribly unorthodox, but just give them like, a GED test prep book. They'll pass the GED probably at like 3rd or 4th grade. Hardest math on the GED is like 3+N=5 solve for N, and like, some very basic geometry going to Pythagorean theorem, which you can pretty much skip and still pass math. Social studies was like, not requiring any background knowledge, you just read articles and it's just reading comp, basically. It's pretty pathetic, I was angry when I took mine, as I found out as a kid me in 8th grade saying "gimme the GED, and like a month to study, and I'll pass" was completely right. Silly adults. But really, for fun, pick up a GED test prep book, and see occasionally how they do on the practice tests. The practice tests, are harder than the real GED (at least in CT) so if they're able to pass the practice tests, then you've fulfilled the govt.'s requirement of compulsory education, and they're free to pursue their own studies.

As far as that goes, there's a saying that goes something like "One who wants to learn will learn in spite of anyone else, One who doesn't want to learn won't learn in spite of everyone else." Something like that. Your kids have to want to actually learn stuff, that's more what you should be aiming for. Like when I was a kid, in like 4-6th grade, I'd just for hours at a time, read my 1988 World Book Encyclopedias, I likely learned more doing that than in school. Nowadays, I'd say just letting your kids play around for 2 hours on wikipedia reading stuff would be awesome, as you can jump from article to article. So like, you can have a chain of stuff you're learning about. I do that exact same thing now, I'll just google stuff, and research things. I'd say get them in the spirit of researching and thinking for themselves. Obviously, you gotta teach them the basic math, science, all that stuff, but let them be open.

My friend, he said a problem with my idea was kids would like, just wanna learn to bake cakes all day. Me, I said fine. Let them do that, they need to learn math for that. Stuff like that.

I don't know, I got a lot to say regarding that, but basically, your kids, if they wanna learn stuff, will learn in spite of you, but if they don't, they won't learn despite what you do. One thing I'd say is, don't BS them, you have to tell them WHY they're doing what they're doing. That's key. You need a satisfactory reason WHY your kids have to do what they're doing. Like, if someone told me more practical reasons to know algebra in middle school and high school, I sure as hell would have paid more attention, but because nobody told me the practical engineering stuff, I'm stuck now without knowing it, and wanting to engineer things. One odd thing, too, in that regard, for the part of high school I was in, I got transferred after failing algebra 1/pre-Algebra, to business math and pretty much aced business math. Stuff like that happened with me, I needed more "verbal" problems basically.

For me, though, I'm DXed NVLD, nonverbal learning disorder. My verbal IQ is like 130+, but my nonverbal is around 80. So half a genius, half kind of an idiot. I'm also very likely HFA, NVLD and HFA are sorta comorbid with eachother, but NVLD is a bit more concrete in the causes, basically it's a right brain deficiency of some kind. So verbal stuff is stupid easy to me, which is why every post I make on here is like a bunch of paragraphs of stuff, but like, visual spatial/social is hard for me. You gotta figure that out, too, whether your kids are visual thinkers, verbal thinkers, dyslexic, etc, and figure out how to work around that.

I really commend you for home schooling, though. Public schools really seem to be quite evil.

Although right now you're considering elementary grade curriculum I have more to say regarding recommendations for high school grades.

For science Apologia was the best. I do not know what the current owners of Apologia have or will do to the curriculum since Dr. Wile left, but his chemistry and physics textbooks are the best there are.

For mathematics I would recommend Bob Jones Algebra I & II, Plane Geometry, and Consumer Math (those are the ones I've studied already anyway). I had tried Saxon Math, but their presentation of the subject almost lacks explanation and is entirely dull.

For history, which I also had enjoyed during elementary grades, I would recommend the KONOS curriculum. It's a curriculum which coordinates with other curriculum and source texts and has cool timeline activities that I thought were fascinating at least.

For language I would recommend such textbooks as English from the Roots Up, Grammar By Diagram, English From Latin & Greek, and such of the sort that teaches how words are formed, their place within sentences, their pronunciation, etc.

If you might be interested in Classical education, there's Memoria Press which has Latin and Logic textbooks and is meant primarily for the elementary grades.

For college level study, which would be a while from now I realize, there are used book stores which often carry college textbooks.

*high five to you!* )

I was homeschooled my whole life from birth until I went to do my GCSE's at college aged 2 weeks younger than 15. We used the National Curriculum as a guide (well, a starting point...well we thought about it sometimes...lol)

I have many happy memories of "baking cakes all day" starting aged 2yrs. I learned hand-eye co-ordination, conversion of weights, measures and temperatures, and how effort, concentration and patience can reap satisfying results and rewards! I grew up knowing my way around a kitchen and am able to cook and bake a wide variety of dishes and am not intimidated by cooking (unlike some of my school-educated friends who can barely make beans on toast in the microwave and live on breakfast cereal and takeaways - in their 20s-30s!! ! *shock!*). I find with home-ed things are not as they seem...in school a cake would count as "home-economics" (or whatever), whereas in home-ed the lines are more flexible and it can count for research skills (finding the recipe), problem solving (the jug is measured in mls, not fl oz), following written directions accurately, science ("why does cake mix curdle?", "let's look it up!"), and more! LOL

I also have many happy memories of being engrossed in my maths book for weeks at a time, climbing trees, art and making things, going to museums and art galleries, meeting with other home-ed families for activities, and devouring 5-10 novels a week on top of my 'school' reading. Take their interests, water them and feed them and give them sunshine and they will flourish! )

In sales they train you that "enthusiasm rubs off on your client" - I would certainly say that was true for me and my home-educated sister, my mum was always enthusiastic and never deterred us from what we were interested in. Most of the time we directed our own learning, however my mum did step in with guidance when needed (such as "you have spent six months learning and reading anything to do with embroidery and you have produced some great work...how about taking a break to do some *insert subject here* for an hour and then go back to it...").
In my opinion home-ed is very much a way of life, not just having "school" in the house from 8.30am-3.30pm.

I wish you and your children the very best of luck with what will be a great adventure!! !

I can't thank you guys enough for your help. Your insight into helping my kids is invaluable. I seriously can't thank you enough.

Now I know this is a bit of a thread-resurrection, but it was a relatively recent thread updated within a few days. Also, concerning technology, note that I am more than slightly reactionary and favor paper copies of books.

First, I would like to congratulate you on your decision to homeschool your children. I do wish that I am still homeschooled, but I recognize that the transition into public school may have reduced the severity of my AD.

Second, I would like to tell you that the extremely high teacher:student ratio helps and provides for a level of care out-school teachers cannot provide without suggesting some violation of moral or social conventions. Having a parent teach me helped with the cognitive differences you may have already noted. The ADHD would definitely be helped, as homeschool will not probably require your child to take the (anecdotal, but certainly possible) mind-numbing medications. Perhaps, the level of care the mother can provide will even alleviate the worst effects of it while preventing the usage of such drugs. Your position as the mother of the students also gives you more figurative room to take care of the disciplinary issues that out-schools with which out-schools do not concern themselves too much.

On the subject of the curriculum, I know of an excellent one, but those who disagree with certain beliefs that fall in the religious category may find it offensive. I have a theoretical curriculum formulated from the ideas presented in the book Intelligence Can Be Taught, although it focuses on intelligence as the higher pursuit more than they focus on education for preparation for the standardized tests and does not provide actual textbooks. You may discuss this over private messaging, if you would like to prevent the inevitable reaction of the other readers. The curricula you should probably avoid are the ones that loudly proclaim their ideals of equality, as the act of homeschooling itself is already slightly opposed to equality primarily because of the nature of its focus on educational liberty.

However, concerning the response to interesting subjects, I will state, as someone with AD, that special interests hold a special role in life in that I already had vague ideas about what I wanted to study as early as the fifth grade. Try to find the special interests of your children but remember that they may not manifest completely until the years preceding middle school. For me, I found that some chemistry textbooks discarded at the local library were interesting during the third grade, but only narrowed it slightly after three years. This probably finished last year, as I think my choice of major is final (although I will have a year as a high school senior and another as an undergraduate freshman to know). Once you discover their special interests, begin developing them while maintaining a balanced education.

Expanding on AD, I know that for myself, my potential success:real success ratio is higher than it is for most people. Although I can perform (subjectively) interesting tasks as quickly as at triple the speed for others (primarily rote memorization, which is useless to most), it only holds for my special interests. Often, I find that I can get acceptable test scores with only a few minutes of studying, although this still holds only for subjects I find sufficiently interesting. In hindsight, it may have been better not to spend a year doing double lessons (5th and 6th grades done in a school year), because some of those concerned social conventions and were rather important to the student with AD.

About technology, I think that the, "magic," of computers vanished after receiving unrestricted access. When computer access is regulated and limited, the times when one is allowed access to them become special and provide a sense of reward. I know that I always had a fascination with technology, but it never became too much of an interest. Try not to allow too much access to personal electronics, as they may become large distractions in the future.

It is my hope that this response is found adequate.

Thus speaks Kevinjh.

CORRECTION:
Original: ...they focus...
Revision: ...it focuses...

For grade 3, I was home schooled with material from the A.C.E. homeschooling kit, which was what a somewhat local private school in our area was using (so it's what my Mom heard of first). The workbooks were fun and somewhat educational, and came in a series of units, which you could do at whatever speed you liked. A major con of these would be how heavily religious they are (unless you are already a devout Christian, you will not want them... I recall they included such promptings as "let's pray" before each quiz in the text). However, their pros are they they have lots of illustrations (at least in the elementary school material) and teach things like reading and social studies in interesting modular units (like there was a unit set I remember that was about being a veterinarian and taking care of different kinds of animals). So you completed the lessons at whatever rate or order that you wanted (see link for a summary). They also have technology based learning available, which I didn't participate in (so have no experience with). So if you happen to be a Christian, then you may find this material suitable for the younger grades.

Next, for grades 4 and 5, I was home schooled with the A beka books curriculum instead, which was quite a bit more traditional. Their material covers all grades, and covers a wide variety of courses. While the company also sells to Christian educators, their core courses were mostly normal (no "pray now" sort of stuff, at least not for the grades I did, but still some references to God here and there). They keep these things in their Bible lesson books, as well as in some of the supplemental readers (which I only read the catalogue summaries for; you know the course material is pretty decent if the kid (i.e. me at the time) reads the descriptions of every item in the catalogue before Mom and Dad order the lessons for the year). For reading, I read lots of books from the library. I covered *ahem*"God's gift of language" A, B, and C, "Understanding/Investigating God's world" (mostly just the title of these 2 were religious), "Penmanship mastery" I and II, Arithmetic 4, 5, and 6, and "Old world history and geography." Reading, social studies, and history (plus much more science and technology) were courtesy of the public library, plus I had a writing tutor a couple of hours a week for composition in grade 5. The art project books were a lot of fun. On the one hand, this curriculum still has some of the Bible focus in it, but on the other hand it was pretty interesting and I learned what was apparently a huge amount compared to my peers in the regular school system (as after going back to the regular school system from grades 6 to 12 (because they had knowledgeable teachers and lab equipment), I was way ahead from the beginning and ended up graduating with like a 98% average). Here's their website if you do happen to be interested: link

Commenting on the GED book comment above, yes, I had that around the house, too (as my Dad had been a teacher), and thought it was pretty fun (and very easy).

Some other good learning references that I particularly remember were: the Charlie Brown 'Cyclopedia set, a lot of Usborne science and puzzle books that the library had (I think that's the correct publisher name; edit: while the covers look unfamiliar, I think the books I enjoyed have been quite thoroughly rebranded, some turning into the "See inside" series, here: link and the "Understanding science" series), a couple big encyclopedias, "The way things work," and the "Big Bird's Sesame Street dictionary" set.