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Comment by dkhenry | Hacker News Reader

Third Grade, First Grade, and Pre-Kindergarden. I really shared your concerns about academic performance as the course material gets harder, but what we have settled on is a co-op program that teaches the fundamentals of learning in the early years ( K - 6 ) and then progressively pushes the students towards independent study in the more advanced years, with a very extensive curriculum.

Honestly the foundational work is just as vital to the parents as it is to the kids as we will be simply guiding them through a high school curriculum that is much more advanced that anything we ever experienced. This is the program we are using, but we have two more years before we begin.

https://www.classicalconversations.com/challenge/

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I tend to agree that there are some amazing early education opportunities out there. I've seen and been jealous of the education available to 3rd graders.

However, having seen kids give up on the independent study route and beg to go to a standard school, I think you are underestimating how daunting it is to start learning high school subjects as independent studies. Fundamentally, arguing with your peers in history class or being able to ask questions in chemistry is really valuable. A video is interesting, but once you get to the point where there is a part you don't understand, it's really hard to make progress.

A lot of the "challenge" level courses seem to talk about class presentations? Is this a remote school more than homeschool?

They meet once a week for a full day to discuss the course material with a paid tutor. That gives a good time to have those discussions and ask questions.

You are completely correct about how hard independent study can be, in the group our younger kids go to, a few of the older siblings have opted to go back to a classroom settings, not all of them, but every kid is different and with a strong academic basis they can thrive in whatever setting you put them in. More importantly if the students choose to go to college that will almost definitely be a traditional college experience so at some point they will need to be acclimated to traditional school. I hope my children can thrive in the independent program, but if not they will have the skills needed to learn in any environment.

This sounds a lot like my own experiences growing up. We started homeschooling when I was in 3rd grade, and I used Saxon math. When I reached highschool, in nearly all my subjects I had weekly classes taught by other parents with specific domain knowledge, with other students---anywhere from 3 to 10 or so per class. We had ten of us in chemistry, and 16 or so in biology, both with labs. For physics and calculus I found a tutor, a local homeschooling dad who was an electrical engineering university professor, and I had a local Anglican pastor as my Greek tutor.

I found that a solid elementary school foundation from my parents, combined with weekly classes and individual tutoring during highschool, was excellent preparation for my university studies.

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