[captbabs]

Name: Anna

Grade and/or age of your children: Abby is 5 and will be in Kindergarten

What do you hope to get out of this board? Support/Info?Friendships

Do you have a style or curriculum you prefer? Not exactly but I like unit studies

Does your local government regulate homeschooling in any way? Yes, but it's pretty lax. I live in FL.

Tabitha what part of FL are you in? I'm in SW Orlando near Sea World.

[Slipper]

Hi, I wanted to introduce myself since I have a bad habit of randomly posting. I'm always concerned about internet safety so I'm a bit cautious about giving out names right now.

Our girls are ages 11, 10 and 6. Our oldest (5th grade) has autism and is non-verbal with some other medical complications. She is currently in public school, though I have always worked with her at home as well. I have no plans to pull her from PS at the moment. We use Edmark and Reading Milestones for her reading program as well as creating parts of it ourselves. We've always used Handwriting Without Tears for writing. TouchMath mostly but occasionally MathUSee for math (the school currently uses MathUSee and we are going to purchase the program for home use).

Our middle child (4th grade) has Celiac Disease and is in the gifted program. She is also very low weight which has caused a diagnosis of failure to thrive. In spite of that, she is thriving and active in many school academic programs along with physical ones (cheer and soccer mostly). She also loves Children's Theatre and has participated for the past few years. Her current interests include space, extreme weather phenomena, mythology, Egyptian times (what kid doesn't lol), robotics, spiders and painting. She inhales books faster than we can get them to her. Her questions seem to be several hundred a day and usually cause me to go running to the computer or the bookstore. lol

Our youngest is in 1st grade and seems to be heading towards a diagnosis of IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome). Several people in my family have it but it was still unexpected (I guess we thought that since our other two had medical conditions we would luck out with our third ). She has chronic stomach aches and diarrhea although the past two weeks have been great after our gastro ordered a medication change. She also has some aspiration issues when she drinks which we think are causing asthma type symptoms when she is ill. She is a worrier (which doesn't help her tummy). She loves to read, write stories and draw. Whereas my middle daughter is a bundle of hyper energy, she's more of a dreamer.

I decided to after-school this year and will be using MathUSee. Both girls love to read. We attend school in an under-staffed, under-funded, over-worked area. Students who are at grade level or above are usually left alone for more attention to be focused on those who lag. Or, (with my middle child) they are asked to work with groups of kids (including special ed) to help them out (for over an hour a day). My hope is to take the younger two out of public school next year and homeschool completely. Our area has a very active homeschool group (rather they are very visible in the community). We live in Alabama and honestly, they can barely manage public schools, I can't imagine they do much to regulate homeschooling. (That's not meant as a swipe against PS, they have my full support as they do the best they can).

I hope to gain information, support and ideas from this board. I'm slightly intimidated by our middle child. My husband is from a highly talented and intellectually gifted family and sometimes I freeze during some of their conversations. (Not that I consider myself to be 'un-intelligent' it's just not my experience to have such in-depth family conversations). She has been very much against the idea of home-schooling until I showed her some of the hands-on activities that we could do in history, science and math. Now she's excited. I plan to use after-school to make sure we will be successful at this.

[2Corinthians10:4]

Name: Meagan

Grade and/or age of your children: Addi is 3 and we are doing pre-k

What do you hope to get out of this board? Support/Info? Support, info, friends, people who tell me I'm not crazy

Do you have a style or curriculum you prefer? I am still learning and figuring this out.

Does your local government regulate homeschooling in any way? Well in Tx, where we are from no they don't. But here in California they do, luckily they do not require you to report until your child turns 6 (I think) and Addi is only 3, we will be gone from here before she is the age we would need to report.

[Jill0924]

I have been here for a little while, but never posted in this thread so I figured I'd catch up ....

Name: Jill

Grade and/or age of your children: Twin girls, 3 years old

What do you hope to get out of this board? support, ideas

Do you have a style or curriculum you prefer? eclectic? I have taught in a public school for 10 years and have collected books, worksheets, games, etc... for most of the elementary school grades. So it is safe to say I will pull ideas from here there and everywhere LOL

Does your local government regulate homeschooling in any way? no

[blueyedbabii]

Name: Nickie

Grade and/or age of your children: Jacob, 6 yrs old, and first grrade

What do you hope to get out of this board? Help and some good ideas about teaching hin

Do you have a style or curriculum you prefer? Unschooling seems the best to call it so far

Does your local government regulate homeschooling in any way? as far as I've looked into it nope

Anything else? we try to encourage other extras at a young age

[katshu]

Name: Katie

Grade and/or age of your children: Boys, ages 12 and 7

What do you hope to get out of this board? support, ideas, information, etc

Do you have a style or curriculum you prefer? We are very relaxed and pretty much live on our computers and gadgets, lol. Our curriculum is online, as are all of our additional resources.

Does your local government regulate homeschooling in any way? I have to turn in monthly attendance records, but that's about the extent.

Looking forward to "meeting" everyone!

[Niamh ૐ]

Name: Niamh (NEE-iv)

Grade and/or age of your children: Seamus (01/24/07- I guess grade K); Rhiannon (01/20/10- no grade yet); Baby #3 (EDD- 07/31/12)

What do you hope to get out of this board? hmm... I guess just support, and friends, and ideas.

Do you have a style or curriculum you prefer? Right now, we are mostly just worksheet-style. No specific curriculum. We buy various at-home learning worksheets. Seamus does anywhere between 0-3 worksheets a day. Lately it's just been one worksheet (sight words and/or handwriting).

Does your local government regulate homeschooling in any way? Actually, we live in a pretty great town that is VERY homeschool-oriented. Seamus is in Taekwondo and several of the students there are also homeschooled. There's a homeschooling center in the town (called "Iowa Street School") and they function as both a public school and a homeschooling center. If a student is registered there (and they'd technically be registered as a public school student), they can either go path A, which is 3 days a week of in-class, and the rest is home-education; or path B, which is all home-education (and they help provide the materials). We're thinking of enrolling him in Iowa Street next year and doing path B. It's kind of like getting the best of both worlds. If we don't like it, then he won't be enrolled the following year.

Anything else? Well I guess I can list my reasons for choosing homeschooling here... we are non-religious, so that wasn't our main reason (though we are spiritual, and I do like that I can focus on spiritual aspects more with my children being home than if they were at school all day)... the main reason for our choosing to homeschool is because I don't like the overcrowded public school systems, the politics in public schools, and we live in California (which is one of the lowest rated states when it comes to public education). I also grew up HATING school. I didn't like to be confined in how I learned certain subjects, and when/what I learned. I didn't like that if a certain subject fascinated me, I had to stop studying it at school and move on to something else, even though I wasn't done with the previous subject. I like the freedom of homeschooling... but I also like some structure.

[mommy x 6]

Becky

I have six kids but only one is hs DD is 13

Suppport group I. Am new to jm and hs

We use ACE and worksheets learning as we go what's best for her

Texas is hs friendly

Glad to be home schooling but I have a lot to learn on what works and what dosent for her.

[blessedmamax5]

Name: Lena

Grade and/or age of your children: Davy 3rd, Isaac 1st, Simon Pre-K, Jubilee some PS, Phillip 1yo

What do you hope to get out of this board? Support and lots of ideas.

Do you have a style or curriculum you prefer? My oldest is trying SOS this year and loving it. I'd prefer something with less screen time but it helps me help the littles. My 1st grader is using mostly Bob Jones, my Pre-K'er is Weaver Interlock and my DD enjoys following along with the WI.

Does your local government regulate homeschooling in any way? Yes, I have to keep lots of paperwork.

Anything else?

[krissy1989]

Woops! Maybe I should have replied here instead of making a new thread down below!

Name: Krissandra

Grade and/or age of your children: Caleb (just turned 2) and Lucas (a little over six months)

What do you hope to get out of this board? I'm hoping to find some inspiring ideas that I will be able to incorporate into my own children's future curriculum. Also, it's just nice to have support from others who are leading similar lives!

Do you have a style or curriculum you prefer? Not yet. I'm still very new to this, since my children aren't old enough to really start any structured curriculum yet.

Does your local government regulate homeschooling in any way? My mom homeschooled my older brother and sister once they hit high school, and she said the people looking into their education definitely wanted to see that the curriculum was through a homeschooling organization, rather than a homemade curriculum. I'm not sure whether or not that's a LAW, because I still need to read into all that. Regardless, I'll be going through an organization because I need the structure for myself as a guideline.

Anything else? Not really.

[Doralovinmomma]

Name: Felicia

Grade and/or age of your children:My son is 6 and finishing 1st grade in the public school in less than 2 weeks. My daughter Desiree is in headstart and is 3 1/2. We haven't decided about homeschooling her yet( once she is ready for school) but my husband is leaning towards it since I'm going to start doing it with Bradleigh.

What do you hope to get out of this board? support, ideas, like mothers who i can talk to

Do you have a style or curriculum you prefer? well we have been deciding on this for months and months now and now that we have finally decided to do it I think we are going to go with A.C.E. to start with. Then we can decide wether to use a curriculum or make up our own or whatnot

Does your local government regulate homeschooling in any way? I only have to notify the school in writing that I am homeschooling, MI is pretty lax apparently

Anything else? I'm just so excited about this adventure. I know it's going to be hard and it's going to take time to adjust but I really think it's the best thing for Bradleigh at this point. The school really has tried their best with him and to accomodate his autistic behavior and needs but it's just not working for him. And i think in the long run it can really help me also and bring us closer together