Internet Academy

The children started a new program yesterday. Before Christmas I discovered that our school district offers the curriculum online. Your child is placed into an online classroom with a supervising teacher and does all their work online. It is much the same as when I attended UMUC online. Michael worked through math and loved it. It is suprisingly interactive for being internet based. Both children are really enjoying it so far, but it is new and as with all things we will see how long their excitement lasts.
Being in the program does change our status from homeschooling to public school enrolled, go figure. So according to the school district my children are enrolled in public school. The good points are that I now don't have to worry about those people who think my children are not recieving as much academic education as they should (I'll rant about that later), and that if they continue through highschool it is treated just like PS and they get a diploma and graduate officially (heaven forbid we don't document the accumulation of their knowledge with a piece of paper!). Another thing is that it is free!! So the tax dollars that should be going to educate my children actually are and I am not paying out of pocket for curriculum (again, a rant for another day).
On the other side I am a little wary. It goes against my child lead philosophy and back to force feeding information they may not care about and thus will not learn, such waisted time. It also demands quite a bit of time. I would rather my children be living life and learning through exploration then a slave to some timeline someone else thought was good for them. But, with an open mind we will try and see how it goes. In the summer we will reevaluate if neccesary.