Hi, bronxmom,
I'm sorry your sweetheart is having a hard time at school; it's no fun watching them be sad and anxious. I think researching another option is a good idea, even if you decide not to go ahead with it, just to make you feel not so trapped in a bad situation. I like having a Plan B in my pocket, too!
Homeschooling works really well for us, and I'm so grateful every day--even when it's not a great day!--that we are doing this. We have three boys, 7 (Harpo, grade 2), 5 (Groucho, kindergarten), and 3 (Chico), and we've homeschooled from the beginning, partly because my husband works shifts, and this preserves our family life, and partly because Harpo seemed unlikely to have his academic needs met in school (no gifted programming at all until grade 11 in our district, no skips under any circumstances either)--also, he's a very quirky child, and I was really afraid that people might be able to see the giant invisible "bully magnet" sign on his back.
Frenchie (my husband) was not really on board with homeschooling at the beginning, but kindergarten is optional in our province, so he agreed to let me give it a go the year Harpo was 5, and see how it went. Well before the year was over, he was well and truly converted! And he's probably even more ardent about the virtues of homeschooling (for us and our particular circumstances, anyway) now than I am.
Our schedule has evolved quite a bit over the last three years, partly as I have figured out the boys' learning styles, and partly just as people have grown (we can do more all-together things now that I'm no longer juggling naps, diapers, etc. for Chico, for instance).
What has worked for us pretty well this year is trying to do most of our work in the morning, and spending the afternoons outdoors (we go on long nature walks, with field guides, binoculars, magnifying glasses, sketchbooks, etc., or to historic sites, etc.) In the morning, we do some math, a lot of reading aloud (poetry, novels, plays, history, science), some art history and/or music history, and a little Latin or French. After we get home from our walks, the kids work on their own things (free reading, map projects, science projects, bike rides, etc.) At bedtime, the kids do more French with their dad when he's here, since his French is infinitely superior to mine!
They take music lessons, and are part of a homeschool play/fieldtrip group that gets together every two weeks (this has not been unmixedly successful, but we are trying out various ways of expanding their social circles--my kids really don't like crowds, and neither do I, so we are actually happiest getting together with just one or two other families, which we also do every week). We also belong to an orienteering group, which is fun, and when they get a bit more advanced, there's a little orchestra run by their music teacher which they will join.
It's definitely a work-in-progress; I am still trying to juggle the different needs of three kids with different personalities and different strengths, interests, and challenges. One thing I haven't pushed at all yet is handwriting--I am scribe for a fairly significant portion of their work still--and I suppose at some point I will have to get a bit more insistent about penmanship, but for now, this lets them get their ideas down without the frustration of muscles getting in the way.
I don't want to do "school-in-a-box", but I am certainly not averse to using curriculum--I figure why reinvent the wheel if there is something already out there that will work for us. But I don't use curriculum for every subject, either--lots of "living books," if I can go all Charlotte-Mason-y on you for a minute. The most useful book I read along the way was Lisa Rivero's book about homeschooling the gifted--she's very sensible, and has lots of good booklists, and useful interviews with parents and kids who have been there and done that.
Here's some of what we've used along the way:
-for math, Miquon, Life of Fred (my kids love stories, and will soak up anything with a good story attached, so Fred was a real find), Don Cohen's Calculus for Kids, Borenson's Hands On Equations, and the Mathematics Enhancement Programme from the Centre for Innovative Mathematics Teaching at the University of Plymouth. Also tangrams, pentominoes, pattern blocks, cuisenaire rods, various card and board games, etc., and quite a bit of math history (check the Living Math website for lots of good ideas in that regard).
-for language arts, we like the Royal Fireworks Press materials (Groucho used the Hegemann Aesop's workbooks this year, and Harpo has been through two years of the Michael Clay Thompson series now, which I cannot recommend too highly--really great, I think). Mostly we just read, read, read--the kids know several Shakespeare plays really well, for instance, we zoom through several novels a week, and they memorize some poetry most weeks.
-for Latin, we've used Minimus and Minimus Secundus, as well as Learning Latin through Mythology and some Latin reading materials (Esopus Hodie and Mater Anserina)
-for French, we just chat and read stories (Tintin in French is especially popular, as well as French versions of some of the picture books they like, such as The Hockey Sweater and so on. There's also a nice little magazine called J'aime lire that they like a lot.)
-for history and geography, we use lots of atlases and encyclopedias (the favourite things here are the "Times History of the World" historical atlas and the Kingfisher Geography Encyclopedia), plus lots of things from our shelves, and from the library.
-for science, we have science encyclopedias (and we have a botanist, an entomologist, two oceanographers, and a nuclear physicist in the family, so I figure we kind of have science covered!), lots of library books, a weather station in the backyard, a huge garden, some chickens, all of the great outdoors...next purchase is a microscope, I think.
-we like the BBC dancemat typing (a lot!), but don't do anything else online or with software or video (I'm a bit paranoid about really little kids and screens), but I know a lot of people find a lot of valuable things out there. I'm about to relent and get some stuff from the Teaching Company, I think!
It helps to be surrounded by lots of books, I think, and not to worry about finding the "best" curriculum--you can go crazy trying to figure out what would be perfect. I think, especially coming off a not very happy school experience, it might be a good plan to think about letting his interests take the lead--go to the library and just follow rabbit trails from one interesting thing to another--it's fun when their interests generate some really exciting project that absorbs them, and unites lots of areas of study, too (Harpo has been very busy working on a project about the Enigma machine this month, for instance, so a great way to integrate history and math).
Oh dear, as usual, I have rabbited on far too long...Sorry...
peace
minnie
