Welcome to the forum! I will let more experienced voices address your concerns with homeschooling and parent groups, but certainly many here can relate to your discomfort in church and bible studies. I try to just focus on the things I share and have in common, but it is a bit sad when we feel we cannot feel safe to openly and lovingly discuss issues among those people who we should feel safest in their midst.
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Welcome, @astephens! I can relate to your predicament, as Iām also still in the midst of trying to figure out what and how to teach my kids (oldest is 1st grade so I like to think I have time, but it seems we never have as much as we thinkā¦). Itās a process, so itās good to know that others are wrestling with some of the same questions. Feel free to post questions or observations you have on faith and science, or about curriculum or other homeschoolish things. 
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Hi Ariel, glad you found your way here. I wrote up some thoughts on teaching Genesis to my kids here, so because Iām too lazy to type out similar ideas, Iām just going to link it. I think it is safe to say that many of us have been pushed to clarify our thinking on these issues by the fact that we have to have something coherent to say to our kids. You are in good company there.
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Hello, everyone. I have four kiddos (8, 7, 3, and 9 months). We live in East Africa, where we work in Bible translation. Iām an ESL teacher by training and am involved in training our national co-translators. We work on a team here that consists of 22 missionaries and 21 kids, and most of us who are based in the headquarters city have kind of a one-room schoolhouse situation going on, where our children are basically homeschooled cooperatively by MK teachers who are a part of our team. I do the homeschooling myself during some seasons, when we are on furlough or when there is no teacher present here, and I love those times. I also love the times when they are able to learn alongside their best friends, right across the street.
We have used Sonlight as our main curriculum and are generally very happy with it. I was cruising around the Sonlight facebook forum surreptitiously looking for ways to adapt or switch curriculum to fit with our familyās approach to science (which is different from most of our team members whose kids are also in the co-op), and I saw someone mention that Biologos (who Iāve followed by email for a while) now has a homeschool forum and I was excited to come and see it!
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Welcome, Erin! Iām also a Sonlight user and really like their approach to history especially. This part of the forum isnāt as active as the open forum, but feel free to start a topic on something if you donāt see it addressed elsewhere.
Hi Erin! Glad you found us. That was probably me trying to get Sonlight forum people to come check us out. Iām a former ESL teacher too, and now I work on a Bible translation project in Mexico. Like Laura said, there isnāt a whole lot of daily action on the HS forum, but feel free to come share resources or commiserate about the social pitfalls of cooperative homeschooling in a conservative missionary community (if your experience is anything like mineā¦ 
)
Hi, i have 4 kids in grades 9, 6, 4, and PreK. I started homeschooling when my oldest was in 1st grade. He was attending a private Christian school and was bored. My local public schools arenāt great, so I homeschooled him. We loved it and kept going. At that time, I was teaching from a YEC perspective, and I have several Apologia books and AiG books and such.
A few years back, I started to question YEC. I also questioned just about everything else in my life, including belief in God at all. Last year i ended up an atheist for about half the year. I have come back from that and, with the help of the wonderful elders at my church, Iām doing really well spiritually. I am very firmly NOT YEC though, and my entire church is. YEC actually was a big roadblock to my finding God again. The Language of God and John Waltonās explanation of Genesis 1-11 helped a ton. So Iām good with science and the inerrant Bible. Itās a bit lonely being the only person at church that believes in evolution, but Iām working through that. A small amount of people there know about it, but most donāt.
My kids currently believe YEC, but I have switched to using secular science materials. One of my kids is autistic and a bit confused by the switch. For the other two it hasnāt come up much yet, as they both are doing chemistry. My high schooler will do Biology next year, and I plan to add in the aforementioned books along with the Miller-Levine biology textbook weāll be using. I want him to at least know that the Bible and evolution donāt have to be mutually exclusive. So if he ever decides that he believes evolution, he wonāt throw the whole Bible out (that isnāt what happened to me, but Iāve seen it happen to many atheists that were raised YEC).
Iām thrilled to find this forum!
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Welcome Boscopup! While Christy is our resident homeschool guru, I have grandkids your kids general age, and am sympathetic to your concerns. At least for me, your goal of growing your kids to understand that Christianity is not dependent on holding a particular position on science and origins is important.
I think for many of us, the local church is not a very welcome environment to discuss these issues which is unfortunate, but hope you find some sense of community here and join in the discussion. It will never replace a local community of faith, but can provide a way to express and share with others without fear of belittlement.
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Welcome! Glad you found us and you are working through your questions.
Have you talked with @Kathryn_Applegate about the possibility of piloting the BioLogos resource that is in development for high school biology? It goes along side your chosen biology curriculum to work through various faith and science issues like ways of knowing, evolution, ancient earth, climate change, bioethics, conservation, reproductive technologyā¦ If you PM her through the system (click on your avatar at the upper right of the screen and then click on the envelope icon, and it works like e-mail.) she could get you more info. 
Welcome! Iām so glad to hear that your faith has survived a rough patch ā BioLogos has helped me a lot in figuring out some answers to some things but also which things I donāt need exact answers for. Best wishes as you navigate that journey, especially as you try to discern the best way to address the topic with your children.
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Thanks for the welcome!
@jpm, I am definitely happy to be able to discuss things freely here. My church family has been great, and so far I havenāt had anyone belittle me. But they do teach YEC throughout, and often a false dichotomy is presented - YEC or naturalism. Some people are probably treading more carefully when discussing with me due to the faith journey Iāve had to take the last several months. Iāve had extensive back and forth with one elder, and he hasnāt pushed YEC on me, but I also told him before we started talking (while I was an atheist) that YEC makes me want to run the other way. Iām still struggling with that. Itās a pretty emotional thing for me. Hopefully that will get better over time.
@Christy, Iāve messaged Kathryn. Thanks!
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Welcome, @Boscopup. I find some similarities. My family and 11, 8, and 5 year old kids are YEC, but while I was homeschooled, my kids go to the local Christian school. I found Science Geek Sam to be helpful recently in discussing things with 2 adult family members. It may be helpful for you, tooā¦relatively non threatening.
Hello!
Iām a mom of five (ages 4, 6, 8, 11, 13), homeschooling 4 of them currently, and we live in Seattle, WA.
I found BioLogos through my husband, who is a big fan of the blog/articles.
We use Ambleside Online as the backbone of our homeschooling curriculum, and while searching for an alternative to It Couldnāt Just Happen by Richards (it doesnāt fit our understanding of God and the universe), I discovered the book Origins written by the Haarsmas, which I am reading through with my 13 year old. My husband later discovered that the Haarsmas are directly related to BioLogos.
All this to say, weāre excited to have this amazing resource. Thank you!
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Welcome, Carol. It is good to have you here. I have homeschooled grandkids and like to visit the homeschool forum to keep up. Biologos is expanding their resources for educators and homeschoolers, and we look forward to hearing your insights! K-12 Educators Resource Center - BioLogos
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Glad to have you around! Feel free to start a thread about how reading Origins with your junior higher goes. Iām sure people would be interested in what kinds of discussions it brings up and how you handle them.
Great idea! Your 13 year old must be very advanced and thoughtful. It is a good book, and the video they made is also very helpful. I do not homeschool, but I am taking some of your suggestions to heart for my kids, who also attend a YEC school and church for respectful counterpoint (I was homeschooled, so it is close to my heart).
Hello, and welcome! Iām glad you found the site and hope the resources are helpful to you. I used Apologia too (as a student) but wanted something different for my kids.
Thatās it ā simple but difficult! I keep telling myself that thereās no guarantee that my children will always have āChristianizedā versions of subjects around, so itās my job as a parent to teach them how to bring their faith to these things on their own.
FYI, @Christy and others have been working on a curriculum called āIntegrateā to help high school students with integrating their faith with science ā I donāt know details yet, but Iām sure it will be a useful resource, so keep an eye out for it.
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Yes, itās a unit plan supplement to high school biology to help you tackle various faith science topics from a perspective that values both science and the Bible. It will hopefully be released for the 2020-21 school year. If anyone would like to get updates about it, you can sign up here: https://biologos.org/integrate/login
Hi, Iām Steve Willing, a retired neuroradiologist. My wife and I have been homeschooling our son from grades 5-7 with 8th coming up. He will probably go to a full-time school in one more year.
We took a different approach, by not using any formal homeschool curricula. I didnāt want him indoctrinated in young earth views (although by way of disclosure, Iām in the RTB camp and recently served as a visiting scholar).
For science, weāve been using The Great Courses and I can only sing its praises. Itās an untapped gold mine for middle and high school science instruction. If only they had workbooks and testing to go along with it.
Grade 5 we did geology, based on their two courses, Geology of the National Parks and Geologic wonders of the world. Since we were free to travel, this was supplemented by many visits to the actual parks.
Grade 6 we did chemistry, using their basic Chemistry 1 course. This actually did come with a very helpful workbook, and we supplemented with a chemistry set.
Grade 7 we did biology, using a potpourri of courses: Botany, Birding in North America, Biology. We got the Nowicki high school biology text and workbook and gave him workbook assignments.
In May he took the Stanford 10, and scored at the 99th percentile for 7th graders for science, so the system seems to be working well enough.
I would like to poll the group. For the upcoming year I am thinking about a Church History course. Can anyone recommend a good one that is in depth, will take a year, and is Christian-oriented but not sectarian? We want him to respect all Christian traditions.
Hi and welcome!
For church history (which we did alongside a two year world history cycle) we used the History Lives books, which have chapters that dramatize an incident from the life of a key leader in Church history. They included a nice variety of Christian traditions and covered the major figures you hope your kids recognize.
We also went through The Story of Christianity by David Bentley Hart. He is an orthodox theologian, so he gave a more inclusive perspective on the history of the church than some other books Iād looked at which tended to see everything through the lens of the Reformation. Some of the articles needed to be unpacked a little for my junior higher, but it was not too difficult of a level, especially considering we were reading the History Lives stories alongside it.