K12 virtual school for early elementary?

[poetesss]

Can anyone tell me about their experience with the K12 virtual school for KG and the first few years of elementary? Does it take up a whole lot of time in your day? Is it easy to compress, skip busywork, etc for a fast learner? I like the idea of it, and I take a relaxed classical approach, so I like how they have the history lined up with the classical 4-year rotation for 1-4. I do like to plan curriculum and we do our own thing for math, so I want to be able to zip through their math and do our own curriculum (RightStart/Singapore, etc).

Does this sound like something that would work or would I be spending most of my time on their assignments? Don't know if the state makes a difference, but we're in MI.

[momof2kiddos]

I am located in Oregon and we are in our first year of K12 and we love every minute of it. My daughter is in Kindergarden but was able to finish and is starting 1st grade now.

I was worried that with running a daycare and homeschooling her that k12 would be hard or take a lot of time but I don't feel it does. We have a great routine going and it has worked well with us. I love how once they know the information you can skip ahead and take the test that goes with the lesson. When we started the program my daughter completed all but phonics and LA in the first 3 month by testing out of it so we could get her at the level she needed to be at. I also like how they send you all the books and such that you need to be sucessful.

[ALittleBitCrunchy]

We used K12 for a semester last year - one in K and one in 2nd. I wasn't a fan of K, to be honest. Her teacher was fabulous but it was slow. Very, very slow. My son was in 2nd and I really liked the school stuff but didn't click with the teacher. I just went back and looked it up - we were spending 15-20 hours a week on school. Total. I would estimate that 5 hours was K, so an hour a day.

DS is in school now and DD is enrolled in Connections Academy (also virtual) this year. I like the scheduling and flexibility a little more with K12 and I prefer Connections' curriculum options. They are also, in our experience, much easier about advancing levels and adding electives. DD has finished all of her regular courses, except Language Arts, so we've moved to 2nd grade work and added music, sign language and Spanish.

For us, virtual school has been fabulous. I love teaching her without the time commitment for planning and organizing! And free is wonderful!

[cbyrum]

We are currently using a k12 virtual academy for both kids for K and 1st.

The 1st grader started the year with k12 and by January was finished with LA, Science, and History. He also started the year with 3rd grade math and by Feb had the next math. It is very easy to skip things they already know and accelerate ahead to get to the point where they are actually learning something. So he now has all 2nd grade work (except Art/Music) and is much more content.

The K'er started in November and by Jan/Feb had finished LA and Math. She is much happier to be out of the K LA though she did enjoy the books we read she didn't like the rest of it as it was too easy -- to be fair though she was reading prior to starting K.

With just one kid I was easily done in just a few hours max - but we typically did more to get him closer to challenging work. For math it's very easy to skip parts of it - if they know it just give them the assessment and call it good if they pass. If you keep your Singapore math slightly ahead of the k12 math it should be easy to just pass the assessments. I have DD doing most of the math as I don't want her to get to a roadblock, I will probably pull out Math Mammoth (since we have it already) and start having her work on that and just do the parts of k12 that are new or interesting for her.