Homeschooling with K12

     I will start my homeschool curriculum reviews with K12 because I find that is what a lot of people ask about since they do a lot of advertising. First off, k12 has two divisions; public and independent. I have not personally used the public portion, but I will share what little I do know. The public division is public schooling at home. It is free, but requires you to have Internet. They even send your child a laptop. They send you all the books and necessary materials. You are required to log on every day and record how much time was spent on school, because there is a minimum requirement. Everyday when the student logs on, he will see his list of daily assignments. Some days he will log on to a virtual classroom and listen to a teacher give a lesson. When it's "that time of year" he will have to go to an approved testing center to take the standardized tests.

     Independent k12 has a lot of similarities to the public version minus the government nosing into things. Basically, you pay for all of the supplies, including access to a teacher if you want, and access to the online class for 1 year. You pay for your own computer (how many houses don't already have one of these), but do not have a time requirement.  You can sign up any time and have access to it for 1 year. If the student is still not complete with the course, you can then pay for monthly access. If he finishes early, then you can go ahead and purchase the next grade level.

     We used only k12 for 2 years, but decided to try and cut costs this year. I'll tell more about that some other time. K12 was the solution I had been looking for and needed in my life at that time. (That's the beauty about homeschooling. It can change as your needs change.) I had 3 kids in school and a baby. Plus we were pretty heavy into putting a lot of hours into our house we are building while living in it. (Yeah, that's another 50 posts.) I did not have the time, energy, or brain power to develop 3 different lesson plans, or even to create one that could encompass the age range I had. We had tried a computer based curriculum before but I didn't want the kids spending that much time looking at a screen. We had used a curriculum that I printed everything out, including what to say when, but I didn't have that amount of time to spend with 3 kids while tending to a baby and house building.

     K12 is a blend of computer lessons, book work, teacher/mom involvement, and student led. The younger the child, the more parental involvement is needed. Parents are gradually phased out so that high school is entirely student led. This one of my favorite parts of K12. I didn't want to just drop the ball on my kids and say, "Hey, you're on your own this year."

My kids really enjoyed the art program. I really liked all the books that came, saving me hours upon hours at the library, looking for the right book to cover a specific topic for a certain grade level. I had to make a rule that school books (in the desks) could not be read until it was moved to the open bookshelves when that unit was completed. Otherwise, the kids would go around reading all the books and inevitably the book we needed for school would come up missing. I also really enjoyed the history books used. I'll link up some of the books here: