Wrong Judgement Call? ACE paces.

There are times in homeschooling when all pre-conceived notions get challenged and the learning curve grows tremendously for the teacher. I can feel that this is one of those times. The lady that is helping me to get things set up in homeschooling my high school daughter is very well educated. A licensed teacher and a Pastor's wife, she saw the problems with public schools years ago. Living in a rural area kept her from having access to a Christian school. She home schooled her children and many others for years. She still has a full time student now, plus a few she tutors of various grades after school.

In helping me with my daughter's high school, she pulled out ACE paces. I'll be honest...I groaned a little. Laura did not like the ones we did last year. Yet I'm kind of stuck because I can't afford to buy a whole curriculum at the moment. We don't have access to the stuff we need. Add to all the negative reviews of ACE paces I'd read online, and I was nervous.

This lady assured me that this is a quality curriculum. It has been around for a very long time. She basically said that Laura was probably bored because she has a higher reading level and I should have advanced her.
She told me to put my daughters through the online diagnostics test. We did that today in a few of the subjects. I was shocked at what they told me. They showed me areas with Laura where she has gaps in her education. Tasha, because she has been in public school, basically has no knowledge of diagramming sentences. They just don't teach that around here anymore.

Tasha begins her first paces tomorrow. It'll be interesting to see if they are challenging for her. I have looked over the material, and I honestly think they aren't the way they've been described in other reviews.

It's a mastery program. For me, I guess I didn't understand that completely. Many of the subjects in public school are taught in a spiral system. Things are reviewed so much that the teachers figure eventually the kids that don't get it at first will figure it out or a teacher will notice. Practice is good, but ACE uses a bit of a different approach. There is no moving on to the next thing if the first thing isn't mastered. That way, until a student totally understands a concept, nothing is added.

The criticisms I've read are that it's too easy. From what I've been told if your kid is flying through the paces, get one that is more difficult or just let them fly through them until it gets more challenging. I've also read that it is a workbook nightmare. I think you should pick and choose. If you want a more literature approach, then either add literature or use a different program. However, for some subjects I think some mastery is important.

I LOVE literature approaches to subjects. I am a living book fan all the way. Yet a part of me is intrigued by using ACE for some subjects. Mastery is necessary for some subjects. Grammar, Spelling, Math... all subjects where I think mastery isn't focused on enough.

I'm going to be open minded with the ACE paces. I may even order a few for Laura to fill in those gaps the diagnostic test revealed. If my girls don't like them, we'll have learned and can try something else. On the other hand, they may think they are great.

I think I just have a lot to learn about home schooling my children. I think in time I'll learn what works for my kids and what doesn't. Ironically, every time I feel that something is not the best, I hear the opposite from someone else. I guess each student learns differently and each homeschool is different. I'm still a novice, having just been doing this for a year.

I totally wasn't impressed by a workbook series I tried, but a lady I know uses it successfully and loves the results. Her children are scoring well and learning a lot about God and their academics.

There was a family that home schooled in my church that made such an impact on me that I was totally influenced to consider homeschooling myself. I learned that they use ACE paces as their main curriculum. I guess it works wonderfully for them. I've learned to keep more of an open mind.