K12

Someone asked me what I thought of the K12 curriculum the other day. This person was thinking about pulling their child out of public school and switching to the K12 online program. I was so happy to tell her that this is our second year with a K12 virtual charter school. I absolutely cannot say enough good things about it. Our school offers fabulous support that exceeds anything we ever experienced in traditional public schools. Our son is thriving and learning at his own pace and in his own style. The K12 curriculum is rich and interesting. We purchased a class during a summer break to let our son try this style of learning prior to pulling him out and entering full time. The music program is not great and would be better suited to a group vs. one child. I haven't HS in the traditional sense so I have nothing to compare. I love having all the texts, work books, teacher guides, and supplies delivered to our door. Our son also get a laptop and printer supplied to us. We are a public charter school so everything is free. Our school offers everything you could ask for and more. My son (4th grade) takes Spanish as an extra, in now in the gifted program (which offers Lego robotics, academic games, geography bee etc), he also is in environmental club, novel discussion, reader's theater, chess/checkers, soduko, and more. These are all online. The school offers outings twice a month in our area to meet other kids.

I could go on and on. I need to also say our son struggled socially in public school and also academically because of occupational therapy issues the school kept passing off as him not "taking pride in his work". The school we are now in sent an OT to our house to evaluate him and found he has a tremor making it impossible for him to produce legible work. He now receives OT in our house provided by the school and is allowed to type, verbally answer, or dictate his work. We NEVER could have gotten this accommodation in a brick and motor school.

He has also since been diagnosed with Asperger's which in hindsight was a reason why traditional school was a REAL challenge for him socially....BTW I supplement the math with ALEKS.com. We also use BrainPop.com to make things a little more lively. The curriculum is flexible and you can change things to suit your family and learning style. Master a subject and move on - our son is a due to finish 4th grade language arts around December and gets to start 5th grade immediately. He needs to work harder at math and we supplement with math groups offered by the school - math activity day, math olympics etc and our own online programs.