> Since my wife is not given in the vain of teaching
 > classwork, does anyone have some input that would
 > assist me in setting up some additional schooling for
 > my two children still at home?
I don't homeschool either, tho I would love to - right now, the "need to 
work" strikes here. :(  I have found in my house that extra school type work 
is not really appreciated by my kids - spending 6 hours of the day in school 
and then doing homework seems to be plenty of school-type work for them.
So we've (temporarily) solved the problem in a few ways. I've been a lot 
better these days at working with my kids on their homework, to ensure that 
they understand what they're doing. This is especially important in the areas 
of Math and Science, since they are both Language-oriented girls. If they 
don't understand something, I reteach it in a different way than the teacher 
did. (See my previous posts about the Science experiments here at home.)
I also use "teachable moments". A question asked is a time for teaching, 
usually. "Why does the ball fall back to the earth, Daddy?" is a good time to 
learn a little about gravity.
I read aloud - not every day, but often. My girls are excellent readers - 
it's one of their strong points. I let them choose their own books for silent 
reading, but I choose the read-alouds. If I can, I try to tie it in with 
something else, such as a unit I know they're doing in public school. When we 
were planning a vacation last summer, I read a fiction book whose location 
was on our vacation plans. Right now, the oldest is studying about regions of 
the country in her social studies curriculum at school. So we're reading one 
of Lois Lenski's regional fiction books, _Strawberry Girl_. Another idea with 
choosing read-alouds is to choose books that you think they *should* read, 
but probably won't pick up.
We try to do visit places of educational interest on our vacation. This past 
summer, we tied it into the 4th grade social studies curriculum (study of the 
state) by visiting places all around our state: Shasta Lake and Dam, Mt. 
Lassen National Park, Donner Park, Lake Tahoe, the gold country, and the 
oldest living things in the world, the Bristlecone Pine Forest.
    A little story: last week, my 5th
grader's assignment was to list 5 places in the state of California that were 
man-made, and 5 places that were naturally made. While most children had 
"Disneyland", "Sea World", and "Knotts Berry Farm" on their list of man-made 
places, my daughter had Lake Shasta, Sutters Mill, the California Aqueduct, 
the Golden Gate Bridge and such places on her list! Most kids had Yosemite 
and Sequoia Parks on their natural list. My daughter had Yosemite, but she 
had others that no other child had - Joshua Tree, the Salton Sea, Mt. Lassen. 
She took her list from the places we went these past two summers and spring.
In short, my experience has been to supplement with as much as you can 
without resorting to the "books and paper" type of learning. You get to know 
your kids in a whole different way, your kids won't retaliate because they're 
tired of the school way of learning, and you (and your wife) will enjoy it as 
well!
                                 -donna
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