Yes we did homeschool at least 1 child for the last 20 years. It seems like it went by in a flash though some days were very tough. Now that one of our sons is at Columbia and another is at Harvard, we feel we did not let them down academically which was a fear early on: both my husband and I worked full time for many of the last 20 years. We just have 4 more kids to get through high school, Lord willing ;)
This is the short & sweet version of how we did it. I have written about this in another blog so will resurrect that soon.
1. We used the Robinson Curriculum: homeschooled 15min/day. It works but we did find that dad must be involved to tell kids to "shut up & do your work!"
We followed their book list but excluded books contrary to our faith.
https://www.robinsoncurriculum.com/rc/curriculum-contents-list/
As soon as we found the Heights School Book Reading list, we quickly moved to this dad-approved list:
https://heights.edu/parents/heights-books/
We printed out vocabulary words & drilled the kids.
2. When our older sons hit 5/6th grade, we moved for the best school in the World: our opinion. The Heights is a lifesaver! Would do it all again.
3. When we homeschooled we used the following:
A. For Reading: we love the McGuffey Readers! Reading Comprehension at its core.
https://amzn.to/3zzHzYr
B. For Math: which was the hardest. They did 1 chapter per day 6 days a week.
In later years, we had the younger kids do just odds or evens: don't tell my older sons.
This can take 15 min to 4 hrs depending on the state of the child and the currency you use for motivation.
Every child has a currency. We had no tv nor video games so if they wanted screen time, they had to finish their math.
C. For History: we had kids listen to this whole series. When they were old enough to do the workbooks we did some of them but never completed a full workbook.
D. For Writing:
We used Learning without Tears (aka Writing without Tears): because heaven knows there were tears early on...mostly from me!
E. For Faith:
We loved the below set which we still have! I love re-reading them to our kids even though they are older now. I have personally learned so much about simple techniques to increase virtue in myself & the kids: though it is a constant struggle.
G. For Science: we did a lot of nature walks, nature study, cooking (a lot!), gardening.
WE love Montessori & Charlotte Mason.
We did a lot of activities with other homeschooling parents: Lord bless the Archangels of Miami and Homeschooling groups in Boston, Miami, Maryland, Virginia!
We studied big, happy families and tried to take notes to try to replicate as much as we could how it could be done. Though we failed a lot!... We tried each day to make our home a happy, cheerful home. And I learned to stop talking about cadavers, disease, and death "all the time" at the dinner table.
