Hi. I am new to myhomeschoolplace.com. I found this site through some word of mouth at the HST forums. I am looking forward to learning from and communicating with other homeschooling families.

I have two girls, ages 10 and 8. I have been married for 14 years to my wonderdful husband who has been oh so supportive since he decided he was on board with homeschooling. The girls and I are really heavy into karate. The girls are training for their red advanced belt and I am training for my red belt. Dad is in his green belt, and he just isn't as into it as we are.

We started homeschooling our kids in the middle of the 2005-2006 school year. Our oldest daughter had had a terrible experience with her 2nd grade teacher the year before and her 3rd grade teacher was not helping the matter any at all. You see, my oldest daughter is very type A personality. She will beat herself up if she doesn't think she is doing something just right.

She had always been a straight A student. Her subjects coming easily to her and she enjoyed school. So, I figured since my husband wasn't really into the homeschooling thing yet that I would just become really involved at her school. Well, I was room mom-ing for her class, her little sister's class, a class for her old 1st grade teacher, AND I was PTA President. So, needless to I was there ALL THE TIME. I also carry around my PPC (Pocket Personal Computer)cellphone with me. Her teacher could email me at anytime and ask me to prepare a party for the class, or come by the room and help out. Her teacher used this form of communication with me all the time, but she didn't see fit to let me know that my daughter's math grades were slipping.

Well, on the last day of school our oldest daughter comes bouncing into her little sister's class to meet me to go home. She is excited to have her report card and we look at it right away. She had all As and a D in math. No bad grades came home, no notices to us about slipping grades, and no mention of it in our parent teacher conferences. I emailed her teacher on the spot and asked what was going on and she stated that she felt like my daughter knew the material. She couldn't explain the bad grade to me at all.

In 3rd grade, we get her results on her standardized testing back and she aced the math portion. She aced all of it really, but no one at the school would look into it. No one would talk to us about it. They were just content to leave the mystery grade as it was, even with the 2nd grade teacher not even being able to explain where it came from.

Our 3rd grade teacher knew about all of this at the beginning of the year. She knew the toll it had taken on C. She knew that C was having a hard time with math because she didn't trust herself and what she thought she knew. C would get upset and cry and her teacher was mean spirited about it and uncaring.

So....my husband had finally had enough and decided to do what I had wanted to do all along and now we are homeschooling. We left public school during the Thanksgiving break and have never looked back.

Both my girls are thriving in their education. C is loving math again. She is awesome in division and beginning alegbra. Oddly enough the things she stumbles with the most, even though it is very minor, is borrowing with subtraction. I can see her trying to work it out and she will start doing it right....then second guess herself into a wrong answer. Thanks public school!  :(  But we are working through that and her confidence is building.

She no longer fusses about doing school work. In fact both my girls have been know to just pull out some educational book and start reading it, "Just because it is cool".

So, although I am a religious person... I am homeschooling more from an educational standpoint... but I definitely saw God opening the doors and pushing us through them. It has definitely been a blessing.