Our method for homeschooling is pretty simple. Basically, we

  • start them off on Alpha-Phonics then

  • start with How to Tutor about half of the way through Alpha-Phonics.

  • Once they’re done with Alpha-Phonics, we’ll have them start reading through the Alpha-Phonics readers.

  • Once they’re done with the Alpha-Phonics readers and How to Tutor, we turn them loose to start reading through the books in the Robinson Curriculum and start them on CTC Math. Once they get to Algebra, we switch them to Triad Math.

  • We also have our children go through the Abeka health, science, social studies, and geography books at their own pace which is usually pretty fast.

  • As our children read books, we require them to write essays and correct and train their writing and grammar by correcting their essays.

We LOVE this book for teaching our children to read. Using this book is fast, easy, and very effective when teaching the basic skills for reading. We like to use this and the companion readers to teach our children how to read. Once they’re complete with Alpha-Phonics and the readers we set them free on the first few books in the Robinson Curriculum and have them write essays on what they’ve read.

The How to Tutor book is an excellent resource and companion to Alpha-Phonics for teaching your children the “three r’s:” reading, writing (even teaches cursive!), and arithmetic.

Robinson Curriculum is a great homeschool curriculum that will get your children reading a lot of historical literary works where they'll learn about history from the source. They also learn about communication and writing by reading those literary works then writing essays about what they've read. Our children have really enjoyed reading and have learned many grammar rules very quickly.

HomeLife Academy is a non-traditional K-12 private school and ministry that was founded to give homeschoolers and their parents educational access and support from anywhere in the world. We allow parents to teach what they want, on their own schedule and in a style appropriate for their child

CTC Math is an excellent, thorough, and efficient math curriculum that offers math courses all the way up to Calculus. We had been using Khan Academy and Saxon Math for our children's math until recently (end of 2017). We moved to CTC Math because Khan Academy was too easy and our children easily became distracted, and Saxon Math was too slow and required too much work that seemed to be similar to busywork much like I (Tim) had to do in public school. We didn't feel like they were progressing in their math skills as quickly as they should. So far (August 2020), they're thriving with CTC Math and really enjoy it!

Higher-level math subjects can get a bit tricky for homeschoolers especially depending on access to teachers or parents with recent exposure to high-level math. Triad Math treats high-level maths differently than all of the other curriculums that we’ve tried and can provide the equivalent of the following:
* 1.0 Credit of Algebra I
* 1.0 Credit of Algebra II
* 1.0 Credit of Geometry I
* 1.0 Credit of Geometry II (Analytical Geometry)
* 1.0 Credit Trigonometry I (Pre-Calculus)
* 1.0 Credit of Calculus I
* 1.0 Credit of Calculus II

Triad Math markets itself as a “21st Century Approach to Math” for:

  • Students just beginning post-elementary math

  • Students who struggle or hate math

  • Students who want the BEST college math prep possible — especially if going into a STEM subject

  • Workforce and adult learners

Our older children have greatly benefited from Triad Math, and we whole-heartedly recommend them!

Triad Math

We haven’t used Varsity Tutors personally yet, but we hear great things about them. They offer the following great educational services:

Virtual School Day: Nearly 200 free, live K-12 classes available all day long intended to help parents fill their children's day with enriched learning. Some popular classes are "Intro to Spanish for Kids", "Coolest Women in History", "Java Programming Basics", and "The Story of Your Favorite Fairy Tales."

Virtual Summer Camps: Free half-day summer camps are a week long, with enrichment-based classes in subjects like foreign languages, chess, theater, coding, Minecraft, how to be a detective, photography and more. These live, interactive camps are taught by expert instructors vetted through Varsity Tutors' platform. They already have 300+ camps scheduled for the summer and 2,000 families per day signing up.

Adaptive Diagnostic Assessments: Measure a student's proficiency and identify strengths and weaknesses in hundreds of subjects. Get an effective learning plan along with free tools to improve.

Varsity Learning Tools: More than 250,000 free practice problems in over 200 subjects. Also available as mobile applications.

When traveling is not something that you can do easily, virtual tours are one way that you can maintain variety in your schooling. The below are a few options for virtual tours:

Virtual Tours