Thread: Weekly Poll: Would you ever consider an online homeschool curriculum?

You know what they say..."never say never." I was adamantly against using any type of online curriculum when my boys were younger. I felt I wasn't doing my "duty" as a homeschool mom unless I spent at least two hours a day preparing their lessons and doing hands-on activities with them. I even tried a completely literature based curriculum at one point where I was reading out loud at least 90 minutes a day. Besides getting quite hoarse over time, eventually I realized that my geekling offspring just LEARNED BETTER when things were presented to them visually and interactively. After just one year of using the Time4Learning math program, my younger son had moved ahead two grade levels and was grasping concepts that I had never been able to "teach" him myself. This was a humbling experience, to say the least.

For the last three years both my sons have done about 90% of their homeschooling online, and I am finally okay with that. Their brains both just seem wired for online learning.

What about you? How do you feel about online homeschool curricula?

This is my first year of homeschooling...I would definitely describe my style as eclectic. We do subscribe to and use Time For Learning, but primarily for math, science, and some language arts. I did use it for History and then decided to go off on our own to Early American History, since we are reading Johnny Tremain and that seems to be where my son's interest lies.
I still have to supplement the online learning with other things...but it is nice to have some guidelines (especially in math), and some visuals. It is also nice to have someone else explain things...if he doesn't get it, we just keep trying different ways to explain things until he does. Another benefit of online learning is the record keeping. Again, what ever works for each family and each child!

As of right now, we do not & have not done online schooling. We will, most likely, have each child do one or two online classes before they are done with school. I don't think online schooling for all classes would go over well here. I just don't think my kids could handle 8-10 online classes at a time. We use the internet regularly for school, for research & supplemental stuff, but have yet to do a full class online.

Right now we are using Calvert with some supplements. Calvert provides us with a few online resources, but mostly it's all in physical books. I like using online games, and looking things up on museum website, but mostly I prefer books. I might try an online curriculum one day, can't rule that out, but for right now I like having a lot of physical books.

Topsy, I dont think you voted! I put use as supplement - its a significant portion of what the 7 yo is doing right now, but i'm hoping to get him to do more curriculum with me as time goes on. I just dont feel that T4L is as rigorous as the programs I'm using for Orion (singapore and MCT). We are doing history/science joint freeform, and i do find that he seems to retain what they cover in T4L better than what I'm doing 'freestyle'.

I voted "I prefer not to" but that doesn't mean I'd rule it out completely. At this point I'm not comfortable handing over our curriculum to someone else's idea of what he "should" be learning. Of course he's young and in a sense it doesn't really matter what he's learning (besides the basics), just that he is and that he's enjoying it (I try to remind myself of this as we're about to let go of our Ancient Rome study, which bores him completely). Later as things get more in depth it might be a good fit, but we don't need to cross that bridge yet. For now we use the internet liberally for research, math and spelling games, and various other extras, and he's getting very independent online (scary!). I'm a *book* person myself though, so I do hope for a good balance of book learnin' and modern research/study skills.

All that said, there are definitely days (like today) where I wish we had a set curriculum that he could follow to the letter. I feel like we're all over the place and it causes me more stress than it should. Somewhere in the muddle there is a balance, but I suspect it will take awhile to find it.

I have spent significant time just browsing Wikipedia to find whatever suited my interest, so I know there's significant knowledge out there for those who need or even just want it. That said, I prefer the one-on-one teaching style too much to do an online curriculum at this time.

Originally Posted by dbmamaz

Topsy, I dont think you voted!

Hadn't gotten back to it...consider me "voted" now!

I think I need clarification for what you mean by "online". I have NO problem with online curriculum, but I can't see us using a public charter school online. But, then that isn't really homeschooling, is it?
We us lots of online resources right now (like brainpop and activitytv).
The kids use a computer based math curriculum (Teaching Textbooks).

I have always been a "whatever works" parent.