Having lived in North Carolina for almost five years, we could not help but meet dozens of families who "home school". To a bunch of conservative Australians originating from almost the opposite end of the earth, the concept of parents choosing not to send their children to school was rather wild. Never the less, we could not help but be impressed with the apparent academic and character outcomes evident in the families of our home schooling friends. Of course, not all of our friends home school; most do not.
I'll leave you to ponder the reasons we might have had for starting to home school our own children. However I do not want to leave any doubt about our faith in the traditional education systems of either the United States or Australia. Schooling of a high standard is fairly and freely available to all. Highly trained, dedicated and competent teachers are common. There is clearly a multitude of adequately to highly educated graduates of these systems and hopefully my wife, I (and you?) can be counted amongst them.
Home education is a minority option and is likely to remain this way in all areas of the western world. Home educators often claim that education outcomes for home educated students are better than their traditionally schooled counterparts. While we have not seen formal evidence confirming this, our home schooling support group back in Raleigh, NC contained families with children at ages spanning all stages of the schooling process. It is clear to all of us from the results of compulsory annual state-wide testing that our students are, in the vast majority, substantially exceeding the levels of achievement attained by their traditionally schooled counterparts. Is this because these children are more capable or because they are home schooled? Either way, in our limited experience we are convinced of the value and ability of parents as educators.
There are many forms of home education. Home education does not work for everybody, however it most certainly has worked for many of the families that have genuinely and responsibly tried. We ask only that you judge the home education alternative and the families who choose this route with an impartial mind.
SKT - September, 2002, Sydney.
Long before we ultimately decided to withdraw our children from their local school in North Carolina, we found ourselves asking "How can inexperienced parents without training or experience in the art of teaching, take on the responsibility of their own children's education"?
Whether we wish to admit it or not, when we become parents, we are unwittingly thrust into the role of primary mentor and educator. Our children naturally look up to us. When children start to attend regular school, the role and responsibilities of the parents shift somewhat, but unequivocally and essentially remain the same. We often hear of children who are "sent to school so that they can learn", but what parent can honestly believe that it is really so simple? Whether we feel comfortable as educators or not, children themselves will be reluctant to permit their parents to abdicate all responsibilities to the traditional school system! So our role as our childrens' leaders, mentors and educators can, at best, be shared. What shall we make of our part?
We, like many others, have found our children to be naturally curious and our response to their curiosity is to answer their questions as openly and accurately as we are able. If we don’t know the answers ourselves, we try to find them elsewhere. The library and Internet are great resources. Often, we visit museums on the weekend. We regularly involve our children in our day to day activities; cooking, building, painting, gardening, discussing. Every worm, spider web and birds nest is an opportunity for a science lesson. Every night, we read books to the children before bed. We delight in explaining and experiencing our world with our children.
If your family attitudes and activities fit this description, in principle you're probably already home schooling your children. Never the less, there is a substantial difference between supporting the education process from home and transforming your home into the school. We think that in order to be successful, home education must be balanced, diligent, well prepared, well organised, well informed and regular. When these requirements are completely satisfied, we think that parents can bring about even better educational and personal development outcomes than would have been possible following traditional school education.
Home schooling is relatively more popular and organised in North Carolina (and the USA in general) than it appears to be in Australia. Because it is so much more popular, it is easier for a parent to find appropriate and regular social activities for their home schooled children. Compared with the Australian home school situation, there also appears to be substantially easier and cheaper access to a wealth of pre-prepared curricula, activities and support groups; all of which are, in our view, vital to helping "untrained" parents learn how to maximise their effectiveness as teachers. Perhaps the only real conclusion we can draw from this is that Australian home schooling is still in its infancy and that today's Australian home education families are facing and solving the same issues here that the pioneering American home school families faced and solved 20 years ago. We're hoping that homeschoolers in Australia live up to our "Clever Country" idealism, for to be clever with regards to home schooling we should be finding ways to improve upon, not reinvent, the wheel.
Being able to visit a specialist home schooling supply shop and browse the shelves is a substantial advantage for our American counterparts for they can eyeball curricula before buying and thus choose the best products for the temperaments and abilities of their children. For those Americans who don't live near a home education shop, there's always the annual home schooling conference in their state to which thousands of home schooling families go to share ideas and of course, browse products from hundreds of different retailers and vendors. If a family cannot manage to attend their own state's conference, there's almost certainly an alternate conference in a neighbouring state. American home schooling families almost cannot help but be well informed and supplied.
Although many US home schooling resources are excellent, perhaps one reason for their obscurity amongst Australian home schooling families is that they are largely unavailable through main stream local retailers, where many Australian home schoolers shop. Neither do we have our own home schooling conferences where parents can directly exchange ideas and experiences and vendors can take opportunity to educate their prospective market. We've however attended a home schooling fair in Canberra during 2004 and although it could hardly be called a conference in the sense of the American conferences, it may be the genesis of something greater. Alas, while the home education market in Australia remains small, so will the local availability and range of many resources, but home schooling is noticably growing and so too is the number of local outlets.
Australian home schooling families can still benefit from overseas resources. Taken one purchase at a time, I expect that most families could afford to invest in at least some of the available home schooling resources and that over time, the cumulative value of the investment will become apparent. Home schooling (and education in general) after all is not and cannot be free.
We have come to know of only a small number of Australian businesses directly targeting the home education market. Thankfully, for those prepared to endure the reduced spending power of the $A in other parts of the world, it is also possible to purchase home schooling resources using the Internet. At the outset, we want to say that we have not yet had any direct experience getting international Internet orders shipped to an Australian address. (Some of our home schooling friends in the USA have acted as our intermediaries.) However we have spoken to several Australians who regularly place international Internet orders and who are yet to experience a mishap.
For what they're worth, I've collected together thoughts on the materials and resources we have chosen to use and have been using with our children. For each one of these, there are dozens of alternates which may indeed work better for your family. However if you're looking for ideas, you'll need to start somewhere and I encourage you to start with these links and then search further.
We have chosen to follow the Sonlight Curriculum. Whilst targeted specifically towards US citizens (by teaching quite a bit of US history and literature), it has solved our dilemma of needing to organise ourselves on a daily or week by week basis. The curriculum lays out the school year in an easily administered programme. Having said this, we were completely overwhelmed by the breadth of the programme when we first started and required support and advice from more experienced users in order to get ourselves going.
The Sonlight programme is history / literature based. The child learns through reading and being read to. The programme optionally includes a science stream, however it does not include mathematics. You can vary the programme to target advanced readers or regular readers. You can also follow the same basic programme and teach several different children of different ages at the same time.
It is important to recognise that the Sonlight syllabus does not strictly follow the K, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 progression of a traditional school. My second grade aged daughter and kindergarten aged son each successfully followed the sonlight 2 programme together. Because there is so much material in each Sonlight 'year', most families cannot possibly cover it all in 12 months; they either skip past some of it to squeeze it down into a calendar year, or apparently more often than not, complete the programme over (say) 18 months **.
Soon after our return to Australia, we realised that we needed to find supplementary material covering our own history and culture. Don't let Sonlight's American slant deter you from considering this programme and we know many American (and now some Australian) families for whom the programme has obviously been very successful. In some years of their programme, they focus upon American themes and in others, upon international themes. The history, geography and culture is really a side effect of the reading, grammar and language skills the children will build when following the programme. We have not found this to be an issue, but rather a benefit.
Never the less, we were still concerned that our choice of Sonlight may impede our chances of achieving home school registration in New South Wales and that we would be asked to follow a different curriculum. In order to become registered, parents must cover several core subject areas defined by the NSW Board Of Studies and this means that the Sonlight curriculum must be appropriately supplemented with Australian studies material. Thus when it came to our first meeting with the Board of Studies inspector, we were encouraged to continue along our present supplemented direction using Sonlight.
Sonlight is available in Australia through Open Vision Australia and we have been pleased with their service.
** In the Sonlight programme, one nominal year usually takes longer than a calendar year and this has nothing to do with the student's progress. Stop and think about this. Most home schooling families can and should find no compelling reason to directly follow the local school year timetable. Each home schooled child can be at a different stage of a "year", or if all children in a family are following the same programme simultaneously, the "year" can start and finish in any calendar month. Thus we saw no great difficulty in moving from the USA to Australia even though our traditional school years start 6 months out of phase with each other.
Basically, the children progress as fast as they are able whilst adequately covering the subject material. Most home schooling families, including our own, consider that they progress marginally faster than their traditionally schooled counterparts in terms of academic achievement and understanding. Why shouldn't they? They are receiving one on one tuition when compared with a less favourable ratio for their traditionally schooled friends. So long as they're ahead and not behind, they should be able to return without penalty to the traditional school system at a future time, if and when required.
We chose to follow the Saxon Math programme, augmented with the Australian Understanding Maths and Enrich-e-matics series.
Saxon is a grade by grade mathematics programme used both within the traditional American school system and increasingly by home schoolers. To teach about money, it uses examples based on US currency and for measurement, it teaches the imperial system as much as the metric. If you can restrain yourself from frothing at the mouth over the greenback and imperial measurements and you are able to adapt the lesson on-the-fly, you'll also probably agree that you're teaching the 'language of mathematics' which is completely independent from its context. I can assure you that our American counterparts are none the less skilled than we are because they understand feet, pounds and Fahrenheit as well as metres, kilograms and Celsius. In any case, after a year back in the land of Oz and continuing with Saxon, our kids seem to be managing just fine with $A and the metric system.
The Saxon books tend to be extremely repetitive, even slow moving, in the early part of the year as they spend many lessons reviewing the previous year's syllabus. Towards the end of the year, they advance rapidly and quickly cover a lot of the next year's syllabus. It seems as though the repetition in the Saxon programme has been designed to counteract the effect of the almost three month long American summer holidays: some kids tend to forget a lot of what they learned in the previous year when they're not revising and practicing regularly. While holidays are important, we can only find reasons NOT to take three months off school and as we then don't require the repetition, we tend to skip past the early lessons and spend more time doing the middle and latter ones.
You can complete an entire year's syllabus in less than a year and this seems to be the approach followed by most of the families that we know that are using Saxon. See ** for our view on synchronising with the traditional school year.
In talking with other Australian families of traditionally schooled kids, it seems that the Saxon programme progresses faster than the typical Australian primary maths programme. At the end of Saxon second and third grade, our kids seem to have covered more. This is particularly the case with respect to drilling addition, subtraction, division and multiplication tables. I'm not sure how this ends up after year 6: does this mean that American school kids have covered more maths than their Australian counterparts or that they have mastered mental arithmatic to a greater degree? I trust not and one day we'll understand this better.
In order to ensure that our kids remain in synch with the Australian curriculum, we have also had them follow the Understanding Maths books for the appropriate years. These books are available all over the place (do a web search if you'd like to buy any of these books online or buy direct from the publisher.
We've also used Enrich-e-matics as a supplement for the younger kids. You can search for online retailers here.
The links I've put together in the table below really only cover the tip of the iceberg when it comes to home education resources. There are literally thousands more sources than shown here. If you've never gone looking, wet your appetite below and then start to look further afield to find material which is just right for you.
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For language / arts and reading. See above. |
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Here's another link to a publisher. In this case, these are language / arts series providing introductions to phonics and reading and beyond. Our kids have enjoyed these programmes and they come with our recommendation. |
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We've used this programme to start Brendan and now Melissa on the road to reading. There's an audio CD which takes the child through the alphabet and letter sounds. Linked with the CD, there are games to play, activities to complete and of course, books to start to read. The programme requires that the teacher works one on one with the student. Using this programme, Brendan was reading very confidently before he started kindergarten. Melissa is not due to start kindergarten for six months and in quiet times and of her own accord, she's now going and finding simple books to read. Isabel, who is only 2 years old, attentively sits by Melissa as she's doing Sing Spell Read and Write and can recognise and pronounce all the letters of the alphabet (as well as sing all the songs on the CD). I have not been able to find a web site for this product but there are many web references and testimonials. This link takes you to the HomeSchoolReviews web site which runs a discussion list for lots of home schooling products. |
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Understanding Maths Enrich-e-matics |
For mathematics. See above. |
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This company sells excellent books and software to complement a more formal learning programme. We prefer their books to their software and have used the "Building Thinking Skills", "Editor In Chief", "Critical Thinking", "Reading Detective" and "Revenge of the Riddle Spiders" series. In general, their approach reminds me of what you find in 'brain-teasers' books but this is not being completely fair to them for they offer more structure, repetition and academics in a broader range of achievement areas. We are thoroughly satisfied with this company's products and the kids enjoy doing the work. |
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For supplies of maths manipulatives, amongst other things. See below. |
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This company has a number of home schooling resources. We are using their "History of Science through Literature" and know of other families who are doing likewise. The first few lessons start slowly, basically reading about Archimedes but when the experiments commence, you start to have some fun. The "History of Science Through Literature" booklet is available on its own, although, it will be largely useless to you unless you also have access to the resources to which it refers. For this reason, we purchased the "Science Pack with 'The New Way Things Work'". Encouragingly, I have seen many of the items in the pack available in several Australian museum shops although if you obtain the books this way, the cumulative price in $A would perhaps be greater than the $US price of the pack. In any case, we've found these books available locally in Australia through Open Vision Australia. |
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The CSIRO is Australia's Science and Industrial Research Organisation. Here in Canberra, where we now live, the CSIRO has a wonderful interactive science centre and plenty of programmes for children on what seems an almost weekly basis. However, the CSIRO also publishes magazines for children of various ages and provides an on-line weekly science newsletter with cool experiments, which over time, cover all of the fields of science. We have subscribed to Scientriffic and The Helix magazines for around the last 18 months and our two older kids can't wait for their monthly fix of interesting articles and experiments. Each of the magazines also runs monthly competitions which the kids have regularly responded to and occasionally received recognition. No matter where in the world you live, I'm sure you can subscribe to the magazines. However as a teaser, you might like to subscribe to their on-line weekly science by email news letter. When the email arrives each week, you're provided with a link to a web page explaining a simple experiment on one subject or another. I've been dutifully printing these each week for the last year and now have a folder full of experiments and discussions on a broad range of science topics. |
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I had been looking for an Australian laboratory supply outlet from which I could obtain physics and chemistry materials for a home "lab". You need to "register" with them in order to see their prices but if you're an Australian homeschooler looking for science supplies, registering is well worth it. They have an impressive product range and an excellent web-shopfront. If only I'd known about this place when I was a kid, I'd have found far better use of my pocket money than football cards, yoyos and other junk toys! I emailed them and asked if they would sell to a home schooler like me. They responded... Dear Stefan You can purchase over the Internet (www.livingstone.com.au) or you can visit our showroom at 106 - 116 Epsom Road Rosebery NSW 2018. Alternatively you can call Ph: 1300 727 204 or Fax your order on Fax No: 1300 729 729. |
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Erin showed an early interest in biology, nature and the human body. This company takes an interesting approach to teaching about life sciences: it provides a work book which is accompanied by a music CD filled with science songs and sung to recognisable tunes. On the assumption that kids with musical aptitude can quickly learn a new piece, these children can rote-learn the basics of any subject if it is presented to them as a song. Our family has grown used to music in our car. Whenever we're going some place, there's a CD in the player. After we put our first lyrical life science CD into the car, Erin and Brendan had so much fun with these 'odd' tunes that for quite some time they would entertain their friends with their own rendition of the songs, everywhere they went. Rote-learning the words to a collection of science songs does not mean that the child understands the words. The student still needs to ask questions about what they've "learned" and the teacher needs to provide lessons. The work books which come with the CDs are a good supplement to the music and as always, there's a wealth of resources at the library. Who cares if the kids rote-learn something if they have fun in the process and they start to ask questions? We certainly recommend these CDs and are sure you'll, at the very least, find them a bizzare foot tapping addition to your curriculum! If you're interested, you can hear examples of the tracks on Sonlight's web site. We've used CDs 1 and 3 for eighteen months and have recently purchased number 2. Brendan has been singing the songs since first grade however seriously, the content is aimed more towards the upper primary ages. As with many of the other items on our home schooling page, the Lyrical Life Sciences products are available from a large number of home schooling outlets and can be purchased on-line. |
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For supplies of chemicals, test tubes and other science materials amongst other things. See below. |
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Interesting science links Scitoys.com |
These first two links at the left are hosted on the web site maintained by the annals of Improbable Research. You may know the organisation better for the IgNobel Prizes which I can recommend if you've got some spare time and are after a chuckle. I discovered scitoys.com through the "interesting links" page. There are lots of experiment and construction ideas on these pages. I draw your attention specifically to the links describing things which can be built. The projects are indeed fun and I suggest you choose those that you think suitable and safe and that you closely supervise all of the activities. |
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This obviously Christian organisation in North Carolina provides a range of art curricula and supplies. While it's probably not worth ordering the odd supplies from them and having them ship to Australia, the curricula and bundled curricula / supplies are definitely worth considering. Even in Australian dollars, the prices provide great value. We were very pleased with their service. The various art books (we've obtained) are broken down into a series of 100 or so one-page lessons which you progress through at one or two per week. Before ordering any of their art courses, understand your child's current ability in art. In our view, the age ranges recommended on the web site are for accomplished children in this age range. If art does not come naturally to your child and in particular, if your child hasn't received prior art instruction, consider starting them one level down. |
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Whilst in Raleigh, Vivien offered to introduce one of our friends to the piano. The local music store carried a series of introductory piano and theory books by Nancy and Randall Faber - the Piano Adventures series. The lessons went well, the student enjoyed them and the teacher discovered a previously unknown talent for music teaching. Lessons for our own kids had to wait until our piano came out of storage following our return to Australia. When Vivien started to teach Erin, Brendan decided that he was also ready for lessons. Erin became increasingly annoyed that her younger brother was flipping forwards in "her" book and learning "her" pieces before she was and promptly upped her practicing to maintain "superiority". The two rivals are continuing to spur each other on. Telephone callers to our home often comment on the apparently constant evidence of "practicing" when they call. Mum and Dad sometimes struggle to hear each other. We have noticed that many Australian music teachers also use this series of lessons. Our advice is that if you've any musical talent of your own, save yourself the weekly drive to lessons and the inevitable steep fees and teach your children yourself and according to your own timetable. Teaching two naturally competitive siblings at the same time really seems to help get the practice done. You can always put the kids into paid lessons later on if you think you've reached the limit of your abilities - but go on, have a shot! Recently, Vivien brought home some "background accompaniment CDs" that go with the "Piano Adventures" series. These are fun and add considerably to the levels of music that one experiences within the confines of our humble household but the CDs are by no means mandatory. |
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For supplies of art and craft materials, amongst other things. See below. |
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To help in planning our home schooling programme, we have been using a book called "The Well Trained Mind" by Jessie Wise and Susan Wise Bauer and combining its ideas with those from Sonlight. We purchased the book in the US for about $US35. There are some ordering links on their page but you might also try ordering it in Australia at Dymocks or Angus and Robertson. The book is full of suggestions about different curricula, materials and approaches to follow for each age. There is so much information presented in the book that for first timers, homeschooling might appear a little overwhelming. If you try to plan 6 years of school programmes in one night, of course you're going to be overwhelmed so we suggest you start by focusing only on that which applies to you at this time. |
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This is a handwriting programme we have used successfully with our kids and have no trouble in recommending it for yours. Fun for all. |
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Despite their funny name, this company makes excellent home schooling resources which explain both the "how-to" as well as the "why". We've tried many of their books and craft kits in the past and every one of them has been a success. We highly recommend these products and given an infinite budget, we'd have an infinite supply of them in our cupboards. You can usually find a small range of Klutz products in museum shops around Australia. Most US based home schooling outlets will carry a much larger range. |
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This is an Australian company (Wilberforce, Sydney) that sells home schooling resources tailored to the Charlotte Mason approach. We don't follow this approach, but have found some excellent science texts and novels. The company was a pleasure to deal with and we'll be using them again. |
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Another Australian based company (Melbourne) that we've used several times. The proprietor and his staff are wonderful help on the phone if you're not sure what you're you need or are not familiar with the product. We've purchased from them several times, including a full year's Sonlight programme (which is a significant investment). They also stock Beautiful Feet Books and a whole lot more. |
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This US based company stocks almost any home schooling resource you could think of including many of the books and resources we have used and noted elsewhere on this page. Their catalogue is extensive and I suspect would shame any Australian outlet, including the biggest. Their prices are excellent, although in $US. Their service has been prompt and efficient. |
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(NSW Government Stores) |
Registered home schoolers in NSW (and the ACT?) may apply for an account at QStores. Their catalogue contains all sorts of resources for home schoolers including stationary, art supplies, science supplies, tools and lots of other products. After you register as a home schooling family, QStores will automatically forward you one of their printed catalogues, about half as thick as the Sydney telephone book. In many cases, their prices are better than you'll find in other shops, but not always. However the convenience of being able to order otherwise difficult to find materials will save you the hassle of driving or phoning around. |
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Kingsley Educational Homeschooling Supplies (Aust.) |
Here are a few additional links to Australian distributors of curricula. We've not used these and can offer no first hand experience. You might like to check them out as an alternate to Sonlight if you're in the market for an organised curriculum. |
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All children need a share of mindless toys and ours are no exception. However now that we have four children, we exceeded the necessary quota of these toys years ago. In any case, we've no more space for junk. We think it's important for parents to regularly play with their children and have fun but there's no fun for the parent when the toys and games are monotonous and inappropriately simple. When planning gifts for our children, we now strive to find the unusual and atypical and have learned to avoid compromise. How can we enjoy our own childrens' company when we can't enjoy the games we're playing with them? If you too are naturally repelled by aisles burgeoning with slickly marketed novelties from the latest blockbuster movie and in general, avoid shopping in stores underwhelmed with thought provoking creativity (for example, the ourToysRmindless genre of franchises and its competitors), try your local science museum shop or a place such as IQToys.au.com. |
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This link is to the Australian Home Education Association home page. From there, you can find all sorts of stuff regarding home schooling in your area. We encourage you to pay your money to become a member as the benefits are well worth while. In addition to receiving a news letter keeping you up to date with organised activities for home schoolers, lower cost participating in these activities, you will additionally receive discounts at many good shops and museums. |
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I was surfing for a site that would explain how to teach long division and found this one instead. It's a compilation of lots of links covering maths, science, language, social studies. You'll find links pointing towards activity worksheet generators, facts and others pointing towards explanations about how to teach the topic. All very useful. Although you can just sit and surf these pages for hours, it helps if you know what you're looking for before you sit down. In my case, I was looking for math, long division. |
Here is a link to the Home School Reviews web site. It's a discussion board containing comments about many of the home school resources which are available through the Internet.
Erin is now in fifth grade and here is some of her work (needs desparately to be updated).
Brendan is in third grade and here is some of his work (also needs to be upgraded).
Melissa is in kindergarten and here is some of her work (also needs to be upgraded).