K12

from summerbaby99:

We've used K12 before (for K and 2nd), and I just wanted to clarify that they do use living books for history, LA, and some science. For 2nd grade LA, dd was reading a lot of early American history with books like Chang's Paper Pony, The Josefina Story Quilt, Wagon Wheels West, and others. In history she read King Arthur (step into reading chapter book), St. Valentine, The Hundredth Name, plus many short stories on par with SOTW.

K12 Language Arts program is very fast-paced and intense, especially if you have a child who struggles in this area. My dd (now 9) continues to struggle greatly in her reading, writing, and spelling, and we were quickly overwhelmed by the amount of material there is to cover between composition, spelling, vocab, reading, and grammar. As an independent user you would have more flexibility to go at your child's pace and modify lessons as needed, but if you school through a virtual academy you may feel pressured.

I think it depends on what you want from "Distance Learning". If you're looking to be enrolled as a public or private school student with teacher oversight and an official transcript, then that would be a reason to pursue it. If you are looking for structure and accountability to someone else, that's another decent reason. If you're simply interested in a curriculum that tells you what to do, how to do it, and in what order to do it in, there are plenty of complete programs out there with quality lesson plans that take a lot of the stress of planning out of more formal homeschooling. K12 is just one of them.

from treddlesewingmachine:
I should clarify, after reading Summerbaby99, that when I was saying that we have two friends who use the K12 program through our state Virtual Acadamy who have learning differences, that both have IEPs (Individualized Education Plans) that allow them to go at a slower pace than kids that do not have IEPs. There is a lot of stuff in the Language Arts, as it gets higher that does make it harder to do if there are learning issues. One child we are friends with has severe problems with spelling - the spelling is done on one to two rules per week and this child could only remember one rule when it came time to do the test. It made it hard on her mother as up to 2nd grade, all the Language Arts are linked together. So, the mom couldn't mark the lesson complete because the girl did not pass the spelling, but had done ok on the reading, grammar and phonics. (In 3rd, there are separate books for the reading, spelling, composition, and grammar, and each has a separate progress bar. I really think that it would be much easier for the parents if the Language Arts were separate in the lower grades instead of linked.)

If your kids are bored in school, if the spouse wants to have something with transcripts or more public school like (afraid to make the jump to homeschooling) of if the teacher (mom or dad) is not real sure of their ability to teach their child because they feel they might skip something, this is a good place to start.