I've been doing some serious research into homeschooling and the money outlay I'd have to put out and I've discovered that my state has two tuition free online schools that are work at your own pace and have access to many, many courses that I would be at a loss to try to teach myself. They're also accredited so there would be no garbage to go through with yearly testing or keeping a "body of work" for yearly assessments.

I've gone through several of the sample lessons and am quite happy with what I'm seeing. There is a lot of integration of subjects with each other, which I like a lot. A lesson on the Brooklyn Bridge for example covers art, history, and geometry. And you write about it so writing, and of course, you're reading it so reading. On the uppergrades it would cover the physics of bridge building as well for the science portion.

There are incidental supplies you have to cover yourself, just like in public school system, but most materials are provided online. I really did not like the idea of spending a whole bunch of money to get materials I was happy with and putting together everything all on my own. This just makes things easier.

And I'm going to need things to be easier as my husband and I have now made the decision to homeschool both kids. My daughter is upset about her school right now. She has one teacher who likes to fling notebooks at the kids when passing them back and hers nearly hit her in the eye and then he made fun of her when she got upset about it. She's got one teacher who is using swear words in class (mild ones, but still) on a daily basis and is sarcastic and picks on a few of the kids (not her) rather ruthlessly. She's got the gym teacher from hades. And she's riding on a school bus with a girl who keeps talking about drinking and doing drugs and having sex and swearing and it is making her very uncomfortable and scared. The bus does grades 7-12 and this is an older girl.

So that's both of them homeschooled and I figured it would cost way too much, but this seems like it'll be the way to go with good course work and minimal outlay. That makes me happy.