This is our third year with St. Thomas Aquinas Academy. We have taken our 8 year old son through first and second grade, heading into third grade this year. Our six year old son is starting first grade. STAA provides a happy medium between the totally do-it-yourself program and the highly structured, you-buy-the program's-
books- and-send-in-all-papers-to-be-graded-by-someone-else type program. I think the suggested/basic curriculum is quite reasonable, and should fit most kids. Our 8 year old seems to be the type to march to his own beat, however, and we've had to take a somewhat different approach with the reading program, but its been no problem: the advisors of the program are familiar with several reading programs, and not just the one that they initially suggest using (which is a good program, however, and we are still going to use the readers that come with that program.) One thing I really like are the portfolios. We live in a state (Michigan) that doesn't require us to keep them or to have the State review curriculum, etc. The end result seems to be that a number of homeschoolers whose programs doesn't require them, don't think to do them, or don't necessarily know what to put in them. STAA has a nice format, and it's nice to have my son's work neatly organized. I refer back to what he's done on a fairly regular basis, and don't have to go searching through different stacks of stuff to find what I am looking for: it's all in one neat 3-ring binder.