A little bit about us...
We're a homeschooling family of seven from north Texas and we're Lutheran (LCMS).
We pulled our oldest two kids from public school in 2008, because they were struggling, falling behind and the public school was not meeting their needs. After an independent assessment, I now understand that our kids are very dyslexic with ADHD.
All four of our oldest kids have attended/are attending college.
Kid #1 works full-time as a horticulturist, helping design and order trees and landscaping plants for construction companies, developers, etc. She owns her own house on five acres in the country. She's trying to start her own agricultural business.
Kid #2 is finishing his Bachelor of Science in Nursing. He's currently a nursing intern at a large hospital downtown, rotating through the cardiac floor, ICU, ER, etc. He's also married and expecting our first grandbaby!
Kid #3 is attending a university to finish her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Visual Arts, specializing in Drawing and Painting. She will be applying to graduate school next fall. She also teaches ballet at a ballet school and works at our church.
Kid #4 started community college at 16. She is currently taking the prerequisite classes to apply to the Medical Diagnostic Sonography program. She also teaches gymnastics and works at our church.
Kid #5 (age 11) is still homeschooling.
I never adhered to one homeschool method or curriculum. I constantly change what we do based on what looks interesting or enjoyable and what the kids need to work on from year to year. We also don't do co-ops, hybrid schools or online homeschooling programs. I assumed since my kids weren't ok in school that they wouldn't be ok in those settings, either.
Some things we've enjoyed consistently over the last 19 years:
- Sonlight
- My Father's World
- Unit studies that I put together myself
- All About Reading/All About Spelling
- Mathusee
- Saxon Math
- Singapore Math
- Apologia Science
- Royal Fireworks Press
- The Story of the World series
- Mystery of History
- Beast Academy (Art of Problem Solving)
- The Well-Trained Mind (Susan Wise Bauer)
- Smithsonian books
- Literature-based learning
- Home Science Tools
