Our Homeschool

People often ask me which curriculum I use for homeschooling. My answer is usually none. I don't follow one set philosophy or only buy books from a certain curriculum. I have tried a wide variety of books, schools, etc.  Here are some of my findings ... so far ...

If you are looking for inexpensive workbook pages (which are great for language art skills & math), I suggest Sam's Club. I've bought workbooks in there on a wide variety of topics ... Spanish, cursive, math, language arts, reading, maps, history, etc. I have also found great helps for science experiments & art projects in Sam's Club. Sometimes I can find something interesting in Costco, but Sam's Club definitely has a better variety.

When Penguin started Kindergarten, we tried Connections Academy (a cyber school that is available in many states). There were aspects that we really enjoyed and liked while we were with Connections Academy and other things that absolutely drove me nuts. I liked that twice a week, all the kids in Penguin's class put on the earphones & microphones for an online, interactive class. Penguin made friends through these classes that she emailed and talked to on the phone on numerous occasions. Connections Academy also had some great fieldtrips and families were always invited to attend. Compared to some other cyber schools, the amount of work we had to actually submit to a teacher was not a lot and we submitted everything once a month ... so it wasn't really a daily task that I had to worry about.

About 14 months ago, we felt we needed a change and less stress in our home. We decided to try a more traditional home school approach. I loved all the freedom that we had to pick our own topics, pick which days we wanted for vacation days, and the other countless perks that come along with homeschooling your kids. We've been doing our own version of home school until about a month ago when we decided to try another cyber school....

At the beginning of March, Penguin started attending K12. K12 is another cyber school (available in most or all states). K12 has a lot of different philosophies which seem to be working better for our family. K12 is mastery based which means Penguin doesn't receive letter grades. She has to master each lesson before she can move on or she can skip lessons that she has proven that she can master without doing the lessons. K12 also offers fieldtrips (but we haven't attended any yet) and a well-rounded school week ... all the basic courses plus Spanish, art, PE, music, etc. One aspect of K12 that I'm really loving is their curriculum. It is far superior to Connections Academy or any other school that I've researched up to this point.

Am I settled at this point with Penguin's schooling? Not really, but I may never like I'm 100% happy with her schooling. I think there will always be pros & cons. Will I try something different in the future? Quite possibly. I already have other homeschooling philosophies that I was to research ... maybe this summer.