For me it was Heart of Dakota's  Little Hearts for His Glory.  I had read many positive reviews and even looked at the samples.  I thought it would be great for 1st grade for my son. However once I actually purchased it, I found it to be full of drivel and I didn't end up using it all.  What a waste.

What have you purchased with enthusiam, only to realize it wasn't what you expected?

We started Power-Glide last year when they were purchased by K12 and went online.  It was horrible.  They did do updates last September, and are now called powerspeaK12, but it's still not the best.  I don't like Rosetta Stone, either.  So now we're trying Auralog's Tell Me More ($100 off w/ HSBC group buy) and I think we'll like it.  I'll still need to work in a "formal" foreign language class - text, official grammar, etc., because these immersion programs just don't "cut it" with learning the language in a systematic, useable way.  They're a great "quick and dirty" for a business person/traveller, but not so great in method, IMO.

JC

Hello All, Now I know that for a visual learner...Singapore Math might be great. But when I tested my son at the begining of the year and found that he hadn't retained ANY of his last years math...I wept! Now we're doing Math u See and I think that it will be a lot better for my Kinesthetic/auditory learner. Dolly

Last year, we used BJU Press Distance Learning on DVD. It was the 1st grade & 9th grade curriculum. We loved it. I'm a single parent & have to work. This year my 10th grader is doing fine, but my 2nd grader...not so much. It seems the people that had his set of discs before didn't take very good care of them. Many of the discs won't work & I end up doing lessons manually. I complained to customer service & they suggested that I watch the discs in advance & request a new one if they are damaged. 

I paid $1,000 for USE of these discs. I think maybe THEY should know in advance if their discs work. Maybe they have the time to watch all of them in advance. The time I spend watching DVDs in advance could be used for planning lessons I have to teach manually anway! I love this curriculum, but am skeptical of using it again next year. I am very disappointed.

I was excited to find Noeo science last year, thinking that there would be a ton of hands on experiments. It was a lot of reading and narration, and some experiments.  This year we went with TOPS learning and EVERY day is an experiment of sorts. 

 ditto on the Little Hearts for His Glory.  I also tried their Drawn into the Heart of Reading curriculum last year. YUCK!

This year, our biggest disappointment was the Elson Readers reprinted with new teacher's guides by Lost Classics.  These are WWI era readers that came highly recommended from a Classical Christian website.  I purchased levels 1, 3, 5 and 6 for my kids.  My hope was that with the help of the teacher's guide we would be able to discuss the literature in the readers in a more meaningful way.   I was getting tired of narrations and comprehension questions.  I wanted to have some deep conversations with my kids as we interacted with the stories and poems in the readers, which, for the most part, were meaty selections written at a higher grade level than modern readers.

Unfortunately, we just couldn't make it work.  We couldn't get into the stories and didn't care what the authors were saying.  It didn't take long before we were just muddling through checking off that we did it but getting no pleasure from it.  Waste of time and money!

Saxon math ... I'd heard nothing but rave reviews about it before we started homeschooling and we actually did like it for kindergarten.  After that it was boring and tedious - and definitely not worth the price.

I have to say that Life of Fred and Teaching Textbooks have been the most enjoyable purchases we've made. Tthey really "clicked" with my son and he couldn't wait to do the Life of Fred books and now he does Teaching Textbooks every day because he actually WANTS to.

*sorry posted in the wrong thread!

For me it was Phonic's zoo from IEW, it was way too hard for my dyslexic child. AAS is working much better. And for any of you looking for a christian phonics program on line check out this link. It is free. And is just like the AAS activities.

http://www.thephonicspage.org/

Alpha Omega Lifepacks. They are so deadly dull that we can't even muster the mental energy to do them.  A Sonlight family should have known better!

This language program was HORRID! While the authors/creators of the Arabic program claimed that they assumed no prior knowledge, there is almost no way that anyone could use this program successfully without prior knowledge. I tried it out before setting my son loose within the program and was left scratching my head, so I called Auralog to seek help. Their customer service was no better. The person that was helping me also had limited Arabic, and could not find his way out of a paper bag, much less the first lesson he was helping me with.

We will soon be trying Fluenz and look forward to that!

I wasn't crazy about Saxon Math after using the K level.

For us it was definitely Saxon Math and Phonics. I bought the K curriculum for both thinking it would be perfect for my son. After about 2 weeks into the program when we would start the lesson he would give me the answers before I asked them. It was that repetative! We had to ditch it and just use workbooks for the rest of my year.

Explode the Code

My daughter really needs something pleasing to the eye, which I know now.  :o)  The first few times she worked in the workbook it was fun for her.  She quickly lost interest with the same thing over and over in black and white.