Home Schooling Slow and Easy

To give you a little background:

We have been rather eclectic in our home schooling.  We used Modern Curriculum Press and then a wide assortment of other material to cover most all that we needed to.  My father (a master craftsman) is my boys "shop" teacher and my mom has been their "arts, crafts, and cooking" teacher since they could sit up on their own.

My husband changed his work schedule so that he could be home the better part of the day with the boys, actively participating in their education. (he gets up at 2:45 and gets home about 2pm every day)….  My in-laws are great and lend a hand with the boys when we need them to. 

My boys have never gone to public school and when things got bad last year we asked our oldest (then if he wanted to try public school.  He said the only reason that he would go was to "ride the bus" but I quickly informed him that he would not ride the bus because our school system puts every child of every grade on each bus so it would not be uncommon for my children to ride the same bus as a Junior or Senior.  That was the end of that discussion.

We have struggled for the last year because my oldest son could not learn to read and my youngest son (then 5) learned to read on his own….  Talk about opposite ends of the spectrum.  We needed a change.  Both boys took their IBTS tests last spring and did very well but we knew that our Oldest was behind.

Two very important things happened in our lives….  One was a family that we met who was exactly like us and the second thing was they introduced us to Time4Learning  I was against online schooling because our family spends a great deal of time on computers.  We each have one and our world revolves around on-line games, emails, IM’s and now blogs……   But I plunked them down in front of their computers, signed on to the lesson demos and they started.  By the end of the lesson demos they were begging for more!  It was amazing and I could not sign them up fast enough!  They had never "begged" to keep doing work before and their enthusiasm has not stopped……  2 months later and they are "Mastering" their English and enjoying every bit of their science and Social studies!