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Treemcg's avatar

Another brilliant essay by Dr Francis Christian has brightened up my weekend.

I am retired from two careers, Computer programming and college math teaching. Now I spend my time assisting a mother of 10 as she homeschools the last 6 boys. I have 3 recommendations.

1. Use Saxon Math. You can buy the books from homeschooling textbook suppliers or you can buy them used.

2. The Good and the Beautiful curriculum for Reading, Writing and Phonics is excellent. The books are available through 8th grade and FREE if you download and print them yourself. It is a rigorous but child-friendly curriculum.

3. I am about to use a Writing curriculum from the Institute for Excellence in Writing. I have no personal experience with it but there is extensive free material at IEW.com for you to assess it.

A short story about this family: Last spring, one of the boys was hospitalized after an injury. I went to their house to help. When I got there, you could hear a pin drop and I found 5 boys busily doing their school work. An older son was taking care of the 3-year-old. Homeschooling is not just about acquiring knowledge!

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Maria Romana's avatar

Just here to add encouragement for those considering homeschooling.

My family homeschooled way before it was cool! My twin daughters are now 25 and both very successful, by any measure. We homeschooled them all but the last 3 semesters of high school (and then public school only because the kids wanted to see what it was like. They then went on to bachelors and masters degrees, tops of their classes, at a state uni. I'm no one special, and we did nothing special in our homeschooling. We were broke, totally disorganized, changed our plan every other year, and did nothing (unschooled) at least half the time. Yet, somehow, our kids excelled at most everything they did. Children are little learning machines, all they need is a lot of love and a smidge of direction.

Schools today exist solely to sap the creativity and ingenuity OUT of our kids, and to build a submissive slave class. And they do a damn good job of it! #Homeschool NOW!

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