Introduction and curious/questions

Hi from Illinois,

I am a mom to 4 beautiful children, the oldest being 26, the next one 17, an 11 and 10 year old, and now a grandma :), I am very new to home schooling, but several friends do home school so there will be lots of support.

After listening to a year of how my son doesn’t pay attention, can’t sit still, playing with his fingers and other issues, my husband finally let me bring him home!  I’ve tried for a long time for him to let me but he didn’t think I could do it for various reasons, the biggest is I have ADD so getting things done are a challenge for me.  Yes my son has that also along with a little HD with it.  He is a very hands on learner, touching, feeling, questions OMG the questions.  I am currently doing the curriculum Five in a Row. He loves the Unit Study approach, but I feel that he would get so much more out of the CM approach.  I have adapted some of the approach without even knowing it.  We do lots of copy work, dictation and narration, we do notebooking on the topics which he really likes so we work on penmenship all the time.  We go on nature walks all the time and he will write in his journal and even draw what he sees 🙂 My husband has told me that this home schooling is my baby and do what I feel is right.  I am really leaning towards SCM.  I like the simplicity and flexibility.  I have discussed the CM approach with my husband and he feels it would be a good fit and variety for my son. (he tends to need lots of variety)

He will be entering 5th grade, I am using the math program which is web based ALEKS, they do an assessment (which we are going to have to work on him to meet state standards for Illinois, our public system is not the greatest) but I like how they teach the topic and it is very visual.  I guess my question is since we are starting in the middle of some of the studies will I have a problem?  His public school teacher suggested “Shurley Grammer” has anyone heard or used this?  Do you think I’ll have any problems adapting?

My daughter who is 11 but in the same grade has an expressive/receptive language disibility and getting special education support and will start speech/language therapy in school next year so we decided we would keep her in as long as the school is cooperative with us about her education.  Plus I’m not sure I can teach her as hard headed as she can be about some things.  But I do hope to be able to home school her at some point.  For now I am focussing on my son.

Ok I’ve rambled enough, I’m still going through the message boards looking for similar questions.  Oh one final question I am attenting the ICHE conference in June, will someone be there from SCM for vending and available for any questions I might have?

Thanks in advance

Debij