The key ingredient in all education is personal investment—i.e. one-on-one time—manpower—attentiveness. A child can really be educated using any materials, even old encyclopedias, or just the Bible, if the attentiveness factor from another adult is maximized.
If your student is little, any book you buy, no matter how expensive or wonderful, will fall flat unless you (or some other adult) are personally sitting next to your child through the process. Children learn internal discipline by many experiences of external discipline with someone. If you can’t afford to hire additional help, then rotate through your children with undivided attention from you and/or your husband for each subject, for each session—and you will find that both you and your children will be far less frustrated and will accomplish more. Give it all you’ve got. Table other outside involvements for several years, until you have conquered the academic basics solidly. Also, do any of your media/email/i-Phone stuff after you have superintended your children’s schooling for the day. Otherwise, those other activities will eat up your day and you will observe, sadly, that you have given the prime time of your day to relationships that have far less depth for you. Your children and your husband are it for depth :).
Investing in your children is your most rewarding and glorious investment; all others pale in comparison. One day you will hear the Lord tell you: “Well done, good and faithful servant” when it is all done.
The reason I focus so much upon getting as much of it up and running with the A.C.E. curriculum is to eventually free the mother from having to carry, personally, so many academic details for each of her children for 12 long years. The more she carries, the more potential for “mama-burnout.” Feel free to use all of your current homeschooling materials, if you like, but as you may already realize, the sheer quantity and varying types of them will bog down your day.
The key idea is to eventually get schooling functioning without you—so that you can maintain the discipline, dinner, and desire for your hubby :)—and dive into a good book for yourself, now and then. Eventually, when it is all running smoothly, you can still personally teach your offspring the academic topics that you are personally passionate about—but only when you want to—not have to.
