This is our third year homeschooling. Our 3 oldest children all attended public school until we moved to a new town. At that time we decided to enroll our children into a private school. It was costly, but I was able to offset a very small fraction of the cost by volunteering my time at the school. After a few years we found that the private school was no longer where we needed to be. I was feeling lead to homeschool more now than I had ever felt in the past.
Our first year homeschooling was exciting and fun! We decided to enroll our oldest 2 boys into an online program through a Christian school that I had found after countless hours of research. Our younger children started off with one set of curriculum that the Christian school had put together for us and switched to another set halfway through the year. It’s hard when you’ve never homeschooled and you don’t exactly know what will work best for your child. I mean, all of these years I had been sending my children off to school for most of the day so that someone else could teach them. How was I to know what type of curriculum they did best with? Even after spending hours researching, I still felt that trial and error was best.
(They pretty much do their school anywhere)
Our second year homeschooling was a little different. We decided that we were going to enroll our children into a highly regarded online private school. We were really taking a leap of faith as this school was quite a bit pricier than the last. As badly as I wanted it to work out, halfway through the year we switched schools. Our boys were having a hard time keeping up and they were no longer happy. I should mention that all 5 of them were doing online schooling at this time and I was having a hard time keeping up.
When we switched mid-year we decided to go back to another online school that offered the same curriculum that our oldest 2 boys did the first year (it had worked out very nicely for them). After countless hours of research and calling schools I came across Christian Academy of America. This school has not only saved us money, but my boys are happy again! We decided to enroll the oldest 2 boys into the accredited online program, while our youngest 3 are all doing book work.
One thing I love about this school is that even though 3 of my children are doing book work, they are all accredited through the school. We send work into the school when it is completed. The school keeps all of our records and sends us report cards as well.
About Christian Academy of America
In 1983, Dave and Pauline Adams founded Christian Academy of America (originally North Texas Academy) with the goal of making available an affordable, academically sound and parent-friendly home school program to families.
The vision of Christian Academy of America is a vision toward an education outcome for the students of the Academy. The Academy vision is to see each student:
It is the belief of Christian Academy of America that the responsibility of education comes directly from God to the parents and home (Deut. 6:4-10). The Academy exists in purpose to assist Christian parents with their responsibility to educate their children according to the teachings of Scripture that each student might exhibit Christlikeness and recognize their responsibility to grow in maturity, in obedience to God, and in service to others.
Why I Chose Christian Academy of America:
I spent countless hours researching private schools for my children. It was very important to my husband that our children have an accredited education. While many do not think this is important when homeschooling, it was important to him and that makes it important to me. One of the things I was looking for when I was doing my research was a school that had been around for a while. I didn’t really want a school that may have started a year or two ago and might not stick around. We knew that we were planning to continue homeschooling our boys from here on out, so we wanted a school that had been around for a while and wouldn’t be leaving anytime soon. Since Christian Academy of America had been around for over 30 years it was put on our list.
When I started making phone calls and sending email inquiries about different schools I found that the staff at Christian Academy of America were not only super friendly and helpful, but they really cared about my boys and my family. They were so hopefully and very responsive to all of my questions (I had a lot of questions!)
I didn’t want to let price be a factor, but let’s face it, price really does matter. Christian Academy of America was one of the most affordable schools that we had come across.
Since we made the switch to Christian Academy of America my boys are happier, I feel less stressed, they feel less stress and we have more time to do fun things like field trips and crafts!
One thing I recommend when looking for an online school or curriculum is that you spend a little time doing some research.
More to Come on our Homeschooling Journey…
This sounds like a very good Homeschool curriculum and it helps teach kids about what is important in life. You could not get this in a regular school!
This is our first year homeschooling and my son and I our really enjoying it!
I’ve never heard of Christmas Academy, looks like a great online school. I wish I could afford to homeschool but it’s just not in my budget currently.
I have never heard of the Christian Academy of America until now. I know a lot of parents are now having their children homeschooled. Where I live, there are about 30 students to 1 teacher which seems way too high and really hard for these kids to get any individualized attention when needed.
When I was in school, in the 70s & early 80s, homeschooling was very unusual. It seems to have become much more wide-spread now. It’s nice that this option is available.