If anyone has experience with Homeschooling middle school age children, I would love some input.......

[clippyclippy]

Is your daughter a strong reader? Does she enjoy it?
If so, you might look into Sonlight. We used it for many years. The schedule is laid out for the whole year, which is very helpful for someone starting out.
It is a very rich literature based program, and the basic program covers Language Arts and History. You can also use their science and order other subjects from them, but we chose our science and math and foreign language independently.
It is expensive, but I made it very affordable by reselling at the end of the year. I was able to get back about 70% of what I paid. Even better if I would buy used at 70% and resell at about 60% (going down a little more as it gets older)

What I loved the most about our day was the read-aloud time. Even as they got into middle school, we kept it up. Sometimes I'd find myself reading 2 hours and they'd still be begging for more. The books were so wonderful.

For math, we used Teaching Textbooks, and it has worked very well. It's another pricey one, but again, I either used it over and over from one child to the next, or I sold it at the end of the year.

There's so much to choose from, I think it might help if you go to some of the homeschool boards and read and ask questions there.
One good one is the welltrainedmind.com it might be a place to start.

I gotta run now - dh wants to watch more Downton Abby.

[madamimadam1]

once you have decided which curriculum to use then good places to look are your local Homeschool Convention. (They usually have a good amount of used materials for sale) also the booths will have incentives to purchase - free shipping, 10% off that type of thing. I like browsing through Homeschool - Vegsource.com to see what people are selling (and it's not as competitive as ebay can be at times) Homeschool Curriculum - Christianbook.com almost always has the cheapest price if you are buying new. But - find your local homeschool group - most of them will be willing to let you borrow stuff! Ask people you know who homeschool what materials they have that they aren't using this year. The consumable items you will have to buy new...and...this is your first year homeschooling - so it would be easier if you have some sort of curriculum to follow. At least that way you know what direction you want to go in. Most curriculums will have some sort of promo starting in March through May. HTH

[rebate_queen]

Thanks! I think there is a convention here in my city in June but it says registration is closed, so I guess I won't be able to go to that. I know there is a book swap type event in June I believe and I know someone I can ask about that, so that may be the best place to look for used curriculum.

Clippy, I have looked at Sonlight and even sent off for a catalog from them. My daughter is not a strong reader right now, but I plan on changing that. My focus will be reading, writing, and math. I don't believe Social Studies/History or Science are as important, and reading and writing is where she needs to most help. She hasn't ever even been taught real grammar. No wonder some of her sentences sound like a first grader wrote them! I am exagerrating, but her writing skills are definitely lacking. I feel kind of gulity that I've let it go this long, although I didn't really realize how bad it was until this year. I wish I had gone ahead and made the decision to homeschool years ago.

I have a list of curriculums to look into, but I was just hoping for some advice from people with older children, because to me it seems alot of the curriculum is geared toward starting with younger kids. Thanks for everyone's help!

[rbunnymom]

Something else that works great for reading is doing "unit studies". Pick a subject (like her favorite animal) and have her read books on it, do a science project (observation chart of outside birds or squirrels, etc)., research about the animal, etc, even some math could be done using this method. If you make it interesting, she will pick up more reading skills that you can enforce with a formal grammar program.

[kirstiharrison]

I posted before, but I just wanted to clarify one thing about Sonlight. The history and social science are built right in to the literature. My kids have learned this year to LOVE reading-all 3 of them, my 7th, 4th and 1st. And we learn about history through reading. Rather that studying history books, we read about the time. We have studied Native Americans through Lincoln so far, and now are on Old Yeller, Sarah, Plain and Tall and Caddie Woodlawn. You see history through the characters eyes.

Honestly, I don't think I could teach them math except for Teaching Textbooks. It is top notch!

Sonlight is AMAZING!