Brand new to this

[RestAssured702]

Hi my name is Bob and my wife and I are seriously
considering to start homeschooling our children in the near
future. I'm looking to exchange information and/or
ideas/methods with experienced parents.

Also, What can anybody recommend as far as curriculum is
concerned? Maybe I'm jumping the gun? I'm really new to
this. any help is appreciated. Thanks!

[MamaMary]

Hi my name is Bob and my wife and I are seriously
considering to start homeschooling our children in the near
future. I'm looking to exchange information and/or
ideas/methods with experienced parents.

Also, What can anybody recommend as far as curriculum is
concerned? Maybe I'm jumping the gun? I'm really new to
this. any help is appreciated. Thanks!

Hi Bob, Welcome to the forums. I love your questions. I just completed my 12th year of home education and graduated my oldest son. (bittersweet moment) I have three to go though.

The younger boys are in 2nd, 4th and 8th grade. We use Time4Learning for our Math and Language arts and love it. I found Time4Learning in "2007" and after just one year using the program all four of my sons went up more than any other year we had homeschooled at that time.

In addition, I am doing Total Language Art unit studies, along with Calculadder math drills. We also do bible and scripture memory.

How old are your children? What made you give homeschooling a serious look? What are your biggest concerns? This will help us, help you if we're able I'm so glad you're here.

[proud2Bgreen]

Hi my name is Bob and my wife and I are seriously
considering to start homeschooling our children in the near
future. I'm looking to exchange information and/or
ideas/methods with experienced parents.

Also, What can anybody recommend as far as curriculum is
concerned? Maybe I'm jumping the gun? I'm really new to
this. any help is appreciated. Thanks!

Hi Bob

Curriculum???? This is such a Biggie question especially when anyone is starting or thinking about home-schooling. For our family we use Time4Learning & the library/Internet to home-school our kids.. The Truth about shopping for "curriculum" is that people can Rave or Boo all they want, but until you try it ,you will not really know if it will work out for you ,kwim
One of the Great thing about T4L is that they offers a 2week money back guarantee ,which is great because it gives you a chance to try it out ,with out waisting your money or commenting yourself to a full year like other book type curriculum's can.
If you feel for some reason that T4L isn't for you or your kids or you want to add more to T4L, I would recommend talking to other local home-school parents and seeing if they will allow you to see what they use.Your local library's may carry some curriculum books too & Attending a home-school curriculum fair is also a good idea if you can find one near you..
I Hope I have helped ..I am sure others will soon jump in and add soon

[RestAssured702]

thank you so much for your help!

Our kids are 9 and 11 years old. And they're both coming from the public school system

We were thinking if there are any computer or internet based programs or websites we can use to teach them? because they are quite adept at using the computer here at home.

Any ideas or suggestions on that? I've been advised by people to do research first like going to the library and reading up on books about homeschooling methods. and to also look at the laws for our state in regards to homeschooling (Florida)

[Firefly7071]

This is the first year that I am homeschooling my 10 year old. He has been in public school as well. We are using Time4Learning for everything and then SpellingCity for spelling words and then he will be doing reading and comprehension with bookadventure.com. We used Time4Learning over the summer doing 4th grade and quickly realized that my son has not been learning anything at school, but still had perfect scores on parts of his CRCT tests. We jumped quickly through the 4th grade lessons over the summer and are starting out strong tomorrow morning. I was so nervous all summer and now I am just excited!! I was so sick of spending at least 3 hours a day on homework with my son. Now He can learn in a fun way and actually learn something.

An example: we used to spend at least one hour/day studying for his 15-20 work spelling test at the end of the week. Just yesterday I got a 5th grade list from SpellingCity. My son spent a total of 20 minutes doing practice and spelling games. I gave him the test to see how he was doing. He missed 4 our of 35 words!!!! OMG!!!! He will now be learning his spelling through spellingcity. It is the same way with Time4Learning. He learns so fast and doesnt hate it. Over the summer he would do 4 lessons before I even got out of bed in the morning!!

[RestAssured702]

I just wanted to say that it is OK to switch if this doesn't work for you. A lot of times what we think will be a perfect fit--just isn't. This is due in large part to the fact that every child is differen. You don't have to be a liscensed teacher in most states (I am not sure of all of them), so this may be an unecessary burden to undertake.

Also, remember the modern way that schools do things is not working, so you don't have to copy the public schools methods. Some people do and it works for some, but a lot of people find burn out fast that way.

[Cathy]

I was reading through this post and am just wondering if you've tried t4l yet? If so, do your kids love it? Both my boys like it better than any other programs we have tried and they both scored years above their peer on their standardized tests. My kids are in p/s now, but are asking to h/s again so we will probably be back here full time Oct 1st. We use t4l for math, science, ss and lang arts, then supplement with visual link spanish and will add time4writing. They take Tae Kwon Do 3 x's per week so there is our PE and one takes drums, the other piano. We really love this program, update us on how you're doing with it!!

[jlperea22]

Hi Bob,
I am not sure what grades your kids are in, but for beginners here is an interesting website...
Homeschooling ABCs - Homeschooling How-to's from A to Z
Hope it helps!