Families choose to homeschool their children for all kinds of reasons. Some start because they live in an area where the best affordable school options are sub-standard and they want to provide a higher quality education for their children. Others start because there are special needs children in the family who thrive academically and developmentally in the homeschool setting. Still other families choose to homeschool to allow for their children to be involved in intensive athletic or performance activities or who travel extensively. Many homeschooling families choose to educate their children at home for religious or cultural reasons.
Homeschooling, while legal in all 50 states, is regulated at the state level, so it is important that the decision to begin homeschooling include research about the particular registration, attendance and curricular requirements set by your home state. Deciding to begin homeschooling is a complicated commitment that has implications for the family's income as well as for the future educational options that will be available to the children. Talk to veteran homeschooling families about the practical aspects of the decision before you start. Try to give yourself several months to prepare, buy curriculum materials, and organize your home for homeschooling before the task of doing homeschool starts.
Getting Organized
Getting organized for homeschooling involves four aspects: the record-keeping process, space, schedule and curriculum. While the freedom to determine when, where, how and what to teach your children is a core value shared by all homeschoolers, good homeschooling does not happen apart from great preparation.
Many states require homeschoolers to maintain records to account for the number of hours spent on homeschool, as well as lesson plans, student work samples and regular evaluations. The online homeschool community at Home School Inc. makes free password-protected online record keeping available just by creating a profile on its site. It also sells textbooks from most of the major publishers at good prices in its online store.
Whether you set aside a room in your home to be the schoolroom or you decide to hold homeschool around the dining room table, you will need to create space for each child to keep his work and school supplies. Like classroom teachers get the room ready before the first day of school, your homeschool room has to be carefully set up to make the educational process consistent from the first day.
Many states require that school-age children receive 1,000 hours of homeschool instruction, but they do not specify the days and times when this must occur. Your family may decide to copy the local public school schedule so the children will be free to play with neighbors after school and on days that the local school is closed. On the other hand, your family may decide to homeschool year round on a four day a week schedule or to do three weeks of homeschool punctuated with one week off. Your homeschool schedule has to consider the needs of the whole family. For example, if a new baby is expected in March, you may decide to schedule a lengthy school vacation around the time of the baby's birth.
Choosing the Curriculum
Most state homeschool associations sponsor a curriculum fair in the spring where homeschooling families can browse the various textbook options. Some of the most popular publishers of homeschool textbooks are: Saxon Math, ABeka Books, Bob Jones University Press and Alpha-Omega. Some homeschoolers buy into a distance-learning option, especially for high school courses like those offered by the Alger Learning Center and Distance High School.
Doing Homeschool
Once all of your curriculum arrives, you are still not ready to start doing homeschool. First, you have to become familiar with the curriculum and make at least the first week of lesson plans. It will take you a while, unless you are a trained, experienced teacher, to accurately predict how much time each assignment should take your students, so be flexible as everyone gets used to the new way to do school. If your children have ever attended a traditional school, there will be a few months during which they will probably resist your new dual role as both parent and teacher.
Set a date for the first day of homeschool. Ignore your telephone if it rings. Do not expect to do anything else during school hours except for teaching and caring for any younger children. Make sure to plan some field trips and extra-curricular classes where your children can have the chance to be with their peers. Many museums and community centers have discovered that homeschoolers will attend special programs during regular school hours and have begun to hold regular programs and classes for homeschooled students.
