Posted on 07/29/2009 3:45:07 PM PDT by teenyelliott
A new to homeschooling FReeper here needs some advice.
Incoming......
I can't imagine why they'd need to know that for distance learning.
BYU has excellent courses. My children and grandchildren used them. At one time they offered a diploma, but I don’t think they do that any more.
We’ve used FLVS for our older high school aged sone and are quite happy. Especially since I dont have to try and remember chemistry. Decent selection of classes without the propaganda.
Be wary of some of the online schools. We tried one and it was a major disaster. I think they took too many students but our $800+ in tuition was a complete loss.
BJU is very good in everything we have purchased from them though.
We homeschooled the whole time, kid ace’d SATs. I taught in public schools early on and now tutor. Let me know if I can help — I highly recommend homeschooling for about a zillion reasons.
K-12 has a solid liberal arts line up... good quality...
Veritas Press offers a high-quality classical educatiion...
Memoria Press offers several online courses...
Escondido Tutorial has a listing of several great books courses and other classical offerings such as logic, Shakespeare, Euclid geometry and Latin...
we've used the K-12 homeschooling program... it's not part of the charter school... it's purely homeschooling... the curriculum was top-notch... but it is expensive...
That is perfect for my younger two. I have not come across that site before. Have you used them?
I just purchased K-3rd. Thank you!
That’s what I thought.
My kids are so bored at school, they end up helping the teachers most of the time because they finish everything so quickly.
Must be a different program. The K12 program I was looking at was state based, meaning government school that is simply online. Seems to be quite popular, as suddenly I am getting a lot of stuff in the mail about districts all over the state offering distance learning. They still have all the same requirements as enrolling in the local school, and sometimes they want even more information.
There are two concepts here which are being confused.
K12 is the actual homeschooling curriculum. I have used it for six years and it is excellent.
Many states have charter schools (”virtual academies”) which use the K12 curriculum.
You have the choice: pay for the curriculum and homeschool completely privately, or (if you live in a state with a charter using K12) receive the curriculum at no cost (thanks to your tax dollars) via the public charter school.
The charter schools generally require you to input attendance (a matter of clicking a few buttons each day), meet quarterly with a support teacher (in CA one sample per subject per quarter is put in a portfolio) and other fairly minimal requirements, including state testing in the spring. In CA the teachers are quite hands-off, unless you request support. If you wish to do something like participate in a weekly Community Day in your area, to do science labs, art, math, etc., that’s an option.
Some folks don’t like charters because they perceive the government gets a foot in the door. Others like them because it’s the closest thing we have to vouchers and they are seeing their tax dollars used the way they want; it also gets a lot more people thinking “outside the box” about homeschooling because so many more people are becoming familiar with it.
For what it’s worth, we last compiled a list of homeschool curricula on this thread:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2050636/posts
But, there are only a few listings under “Virtual Schools” there. Next time, I’ll be adding some of the suggestions on this thread for virtual schools.
Christian Liberty Press
What state are you in?
We use Switched on Schoolhouse, which is not distance learning, but computer software which I set up and they work at their own pace. If I was going to do distance learning, I'd probably look at the product put out by the same company -- Alpha Omega Academy because I've been pretty happy with their stuff. If you look at the link you'll see that Mitchell Musso (from the Disney "Hannah Montana" show) has endorsed them. LOL!
You won’t regret it.
Keep us posted on how it’s working out and if you have any more questions, ask any time.
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