I can't advise about curriculum because our situation is different. But something we put in place ages ago that has helped - "school work during school hours." So even when he was in mainstream and home due to illness, he HAD to do schoolwork at home. Even if he was ill, running a fever or whatever - in some way, he had to have books open or computer programs being worked on. The only way out was to go to bed AND sleep (which he would only do if he was REALLY sick).
I did use a number of computer programs to fill in gaps in his knowledge; we try to work on the gaps as well as consolidate the stuff he's good at (I uses the good stuff as a reward for digging in and working on the tricky stuff).
Various outings can be used as lessons too - because difficult child 3 is autistic, he's got more of his social interaction from going shopping with me (which sometimes has to be done during school hours). I would get him to load the shopping onto the checkout and if we were paying cash, I would get difficult child 3 to work out how much to hand over, and how much change we should expect. And while scanning the shelves I would also get difficult child 3 to work out the 'best buy'. Example - baked beans come in a number of brands and a range of stupid sizes (thanks to manufacturers refusing to accept metrication, and now simply sticking with what they know). We have baked beans in 100g, 124g, 125g, 150g, 175g, 225g, 240g, 250g, 275g. And many others. We DO NOT have unit pricing (ie price per 100g). So I would get difficult child 3 to work out the unit price, in his head, for each product AND mentally compare them to see which had the lowest unit price. It's a tall order but it taught him to estimate (difficult for an autistic, because they like to be precise and HATE to rely on estimates). He had to learn to trust instincts. And you can't just assume the larger will be better value - for years, 500g frozen Birds Eye peas have been cheaper per kilo than the kilo bag. Only by 2c, but it's crazy. I buy 2 500g bags instead of the kilo bag.
As difficult child 3 got the hang of handling money and shopping routine, I began to send him on his own to buy one or two items - we buy olives and feta cheese in a large deli in the middle of the mall - I can watch him from the supermarket checkout or the café. I would send him there alone and watch - and because he did it with me a few times, he did well on his own (and they knew him).
difficult child 3 also loves computer games and gadgets, he spends a lot of his shopping time on his own now, scouting around for a particular game and comparison-shopping for the best deal. He's learning independence, he's communicating well with people, he's learning to understand commercial transactions.
And when you get home from shopping to fill in what lessons he did that day - you can say he did estimation (Mathematics), money transactions (Economics, Commerce and Mathematics), reading (all those signs, labels, specials etc), map-reading to find the shop he wanted (Geography), as well as personal organisation (following a shopping list, managing time and money, bank transactions etc). Not to mention the social interactions. All from one shopping trip. Go on a field trip to a museum, a park, a beach - you can learn so much more AND have fun yourself.
I have found that teaching difficult child 3 at home has required us to be joined at the hip; I'm often studying the work too, just so I can help him. I use what knowledge I have to teach even more and together we have fun. Last year he had to write a report on rainforests so we went for a short drive to a temperate rainforest south of Sydney. We walked right in, crossed a creek (the upper reaches of a major river system, ankle deep at this point) and saw leeches looping across the moss to get to us. We looked at the tangle of roots and creepers, the really tall trees blocking out the sun, we heard the trickle of water, the calls of birds and insects and we smelt the damp, the fungus and the cool air. He touched the trees, the leaves, felt the water (and drank some). It took half an hour.
Then a couple of months ago he saw a talk on mangroves on one of our educational TV shows. "I want to visit mangroves," he told me, so that afternoon when he'd finished his book work, we took an even shorter drive to the next village, where the tidal flats are covered on one side with mangroves. We waded through the edge, saw the buzzing of insects, looked at the amazing diversity of creatures sheltering in the roots, saw the way the sand is eroded when not protected by mangroves, then looked behind the mangroves to see which trees came next after mangroves reclaimed the land. I was then able to tell him that when I was his age, Sydney councils and government were trying to eradicate mangroves along the river because they were considered unsightly and worthless. They've begun to put it all back now and there are some wonderful boardwalks and parks in Sydney, through mangroves. There is a beauty near what used to be Olympic Village (2000). It's called Bicentennial Park and even though a major expressway is running on the other side of the mangrove boardwalk, you can't see or hear it while you're in the mangroves.
That took an hour, but it DID include a stop at the shop for an ice cream!
When you look around, you can find things in your area which he can learn about and use. It's the sort of thing you tell yourself, "I must get around to it one day," and eventually your visitors will see more of your area than you. But home-schooling your child can give you an opportunity to discover your neighbourhood along with him.
And the best thing? No more phone calls from the school to upset you and totally blow your plans for the day out of the water. If I need to see a doctor, I take him with me with his work in tow, or nowadays I can leave him at home knowing he will work in my absence. Or we plan an educational outing in the area we're visiting. But as I drive to my appointment I KNOW I will not have to cancel everything and turn back, because the school rang begging me to collect my sick kid (who, it turned out, was only 'sick' because the school was too stressful a place for him). AND he is getting more work done this way, than he ever did at school.
Another good thing - no more planning holidays around school holiday times. difficult child 3 is now totally portable. He got a vast amount of work done while we were in New Zealand, and all of the time there was during school term. We might be on a boat trip and he would be writing in his books, looking up to see the next amazing sight. We visited educational museums that taught us about the area we were visiting - the Volcano Museum at Taupo was brilliant, it had seismographs, film of lahar flows from the nearby volcano Mt Ruapehu, a relief map of the area also showing the degree of volcanic activity in each area - so much. We only had an hour there but it taught him so much. The Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) in him had him watching the seismograph screens and he saw one earthquake as it happened, on White Island. He was surprised when told that people on White Island wouldn't have felt it. It all helped him finally understand what I'd been trying to teach him.
We don't do holidays like that often, but we do more day trips now. And every afternoon after school hours finish, he takes himself for a walk on the headland and immerses himself in the wildlife and comes home covered in the Geology (white clay from an eroded ancient volcano relic).
I'm much more involved, but he is doing so much better and is so much happier. And if he's happier, so are we all.
Marg
