HI!

I am in need of some suggestions on websites or books that can help my 5th grader really grasp identifying subjects and verbs. She sorta gets it, but I would like to make sure she has it 100%.

Anything you can suggest would be very helpful.

First off... Why does she insist on calling it home teaching and why is it that everytime I talked to my Aunt she has to ask me this question. As a matter of fact, why does anyone feel like they need to ask me if I am still homeschooling my kids? That is like walking up to a public schooler and asking them if they are still sending their kids to school.

Does she, or they for that matter, think that I just whimscally went into this homeschooling adventure only to change my mind just as quickly? Does she, or they, not realize that this was thought about throughly before making that change in direction for my children's education?

Sometimes I just want to laugh and ask her why she as to ask me that. I love it when she has to ask me this in front of my kids, because they always say, "Of course, we love it so much more!" Then my 8 yr old will politely go back over all the reasons that homeschool is best for us.

 So, tell me....

 "Are you still home teaching"?  heehee

We are on our second week of our 2nd full year of homeschooling. We have already homeschooled for 1.5 years. I feel like I have been doing it longer than this. Funny how you get into a grove with how you run your classroom and all of the sudden you feel like you have been doing this forever.

Gotta say I like the Abeka Curriculum better than the LifePac that we used that first half year of homeschooling. I like how it makes me feel like there is a security blanket to catch me if I need it, but yet I can tweak it out anyway I want to. Sometimes it still feels like it was made for a real classroom setting though with a lot of busy work, but homeschooling makes it really easy to pick and pull what you need to.

Our families are more accustomed to our homeschooling now. Nobody really gave us a hard time about it, but now they call and ask how the day is going instead of assuming that I must not be doing anything and can just drop and run with their errands (my Mom and Dad). My BIL and his wife started homeschooling my nephew which is cool. My Mom made the comment that my kids are so smart because they have the best teacher in the world. Nah, I just think they are so smart that they make me look good! My brother took his kids bowling and came home telling me about how the bowling alley had homeschool days. So, I think my family is embracing the whole homeschooling thing.

The girls are better about how to respond when we are out in public during school hours too. One time we were at Kroger and the lady asked the girls today if they were heading to school after picking up some things with me. My youngest daughter promptly said, "We don't go to school."  hahahaha Now she will tell people we homeschool atleast, which usually ends up in my 8 year old having a very deep conversation with said adult about how much she likes it and what it is like. Luckily, the kroger lady was an ex-homeschooling mom and she was happy for us. She HAD to put her daughter back in public school for financial reasons.

So... I guess I am just gonna say I am on my 3rd year of homeschool and be done with it since explaining why it will really only be 2.5 is long winded.  :)

Hope you are all doing well.

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.