When we first decided to homeschool, we'd been told our son (who has auditory processing issues) should repeat preschool since he had a difficult time absorbing material and because he couldn't print his name "small enough for kindergarten". What we saw was a bright boy who would need one-on-one instruction. We knew we
wanted a homeschool program that would reinforce and nurture our Catholic faith, yet also be flexible enough to work well for a child who didn't fit the cookie-cutter mold traditional schools prefer. After prayer and much internet searching, we discovered the website of the St. Thomas Aquinas Academy. It looked good. Very, very good. I called and spoke with the director, Mrs. Deborah Yonan. By the time our conversation ended, I not only felt as if I knew her, but also that she knew our son quite well and would be a wise and experienced guiding hand. We signed up. Curriculum suggestions included books and programs I'd never heard of, yet they suited our son perfectly. Math-U-See made mathematics his favorite subject; the activity book that accompanied his Faith & Life religion book helped create a fascination with the Old Testament stories. Handwriting Without Tears---could the title be any more appropriate? Yet, few of these ideal matches would have materialized if it hadn't been for the St. Thomas Aquinas Academy's experience and patient understanding of what was needed to help our son, not just reach grade level, but thrive. By 2nd grade, our son had scored in the 93rd percentile for overall math scores in the CAT test. Language Arts, always his roughest area, was slightly above average. In 4th grade, his composition abilities suddenly soared and writing became an activity that brought pleasure to him. As we look forward to beginning 5th grade with the St. Thomas Aquinas Academy, we look back on our intriguing studies of Egypt, ancient Greece, ancient Rome and the classical education that neither my husband nor I had been exposed to in elementary school. Ahead are Norse myths, medieval heroes and a new level of mathematics with Horizons Math among other programs this year. I firmly believe that the St. Thomas Aquinas Academy has contributed greatly to our homeschooling success and would not hesitate to recommend them to other homeschooling families, both newcomers as well as those exhausted by programs weighted down with busywork. They truly are a unique and thoughtful resource.