Yesterday we went to the yearly Washington Homeschool Organization convention. It was educational and very interesting. We learned a lot about various curricula and were able to select what we'd be using and plan out our first year. More later about what we'll be using.
I was amazed at the variety of curricula, and at the price and complexity of some of them. Many were geared to follow state standards and no more. They often had the expectation that you would pay hundreds, sometimes more than a thousand dollars for a system that would mimic what kids would learn in public school, taking the same amount of time. Many systems were designed no to be adaptable to individual kids, which seems to defeat the purpose of homeschooling.
What we decided on would retail for about $320, less at online sources, and even less if we can get parts of it used. If we'd have want to we could have spent about 10 times that amount on the education of a 6 year old. Some people must buy those things or the publishers couldn't stay in business, but the average cost according to the HSLDA is more like $500 to $600.
Another surprising aspect was the variety of people. There were folks there ranging from fundamentalist Christians to hippies. There were folks looking at preparing their kids for engineering and sciences advanced educations, and people that just wanted to hang out with their kids, keep them out of the system and hope they would learn a little if they wanted to.
Off to work now, more later.
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