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.

K12

from momwifefriendedie:

did use K12 for Laura Beth for her K year. It's a great program based on those core concepts by Hirsch (?). It was for the most part engaging and it definitely based it's phonics reading approach on a multisensory system which is great for even those kids with dsylexia and it was all free. The downside it that it definitely had structure and guidelines to follow so it felt like school. Of course, that could be because my child does have learning problems so all work feels like work to us.

from treddlesewingmachine:
used it last year for my 2nd grade daughter who was reading much higher. She was able to do third grade language arts (so that she wasn't skipping too much material.) She also was able to "assess" (take the lesson assessments) for a bunch of the math so that she was able to skip over the beginning of the year review that was totally boring for her because she played math computer games all summer. She loves the science and history, and art was fun too. Music was the only subject that we didn't care for because it was very slow. My son will be starting 1st grade this year with the same program. We also have several friends with learning disabilities who use the program and are progressing pretty well because they can go slowly, but completely. (The only issue that one child has is that she has some visual processing issues and the materials do not come in large type, and type actually gets smaller as the grades go up. But she is working around that.) My kids seem challenged by the program, and we can do as much or little of the activities as we want as long as they can answer the questions for the assessments at the end of each lesson. (That was how we ended up doing music, I taught just the objectives, then we tested. This year we had the option of switching to a language so we will be doing Spanish instead.)
Some people feel overwhelmed by the program, especially with multiple kids, but there is leeway in what you have to do. If a child understands the math with a simple explanation, don't do all the exercises that they recommend. Likewise with grammar or spelling.
I like the classical/core approach - very good reading material, complete and not totally Eurocentric History, science with an experiment almost every lesson. Art and music have classical works that they look/listen and compare. I feel that the curriculum is much better than what my public school offered, (my daughter came home at the end of the 1st grade year with a science notebook that had not been written in, too much emphasis on state testing, too little on science and the world around, no art or music, etc.)
We get ours through a charter school, so we get it free. It means that my son gets his speech therapy and OT, but we also have to do state testing and show weekly progress. (There are ways around that too!) My daughter really loves it, and my very active son is excited to start in the fall, and more excited that he will be learning some things that his sister did not have because she didn't start at the beginning! If you are considering this, find someone else who is in the program and look at their materials, and online lessons. (Lots of the lower grades material is not online.) I really like this program, but if I get in the situation I have to pay for it, I think I am going to look for other curriculum because this one is so expensive because of all the online things that make planning and use easy to do.