How to Home School

 

There will be plenty of time for you to delve into all of the specifics later. Right now you just want an idea of how to start. This is your primer to get the ball rolling.

     First ask yourself the basic question: Is homeschooling right for my family?

• There is a time commitment but probably not as much as you might think. The average homeschooler can learn more in four hours than a public school child learns all day, primarily due to one on one attention.
• Think about the financial commitment. Teaching your children at home can be done relatively inexpensively. The average family spends about $250 per child, but can be done even cheaper. Also though you need to think about whether one parent will stay at home and not work to teach or if you will have different schedules to allow teaching time.
• Both parents should agree about homeschooling and you should have children that are willing to learn this way.
• Qualifications – you ARE qualified to teach. studies have shown that students generally test out the same no matter how much education the parent has.
• Is it a lifetime commitment? NO, you can take it year by year and see how you like it. Children have no problem moving in and out of schools.

     Now that you have decided that you want to teach your children at home, find out the laws pertaining to your state. Though homeschooling is legal in all fifty states, there is a wide variety of laws pertaining to how you go about it. Some states have fairly strict rules while others are quite easy. Please visit our State Support Group page and visit one of the state support groups at the top of the page. On each state support group site you will find out the particular laws pertaining to your state.

     Now that you have found out the laws for your state you need to choose a curriculum. There are many options these days for different ways to teach your child at home. There are online schools offering your whole curriculum and supervision online. This is good for self motivated children. There are workbooks that will give you entire curriculum in a workbook form. You can use the standard textbook style of teaching. There are even such ideas as unit studies where you take one topic and teach all of the areas of learning revolving around one subject. The choice depends on how you would like to teach and how your child will best learn. You can even mix and match approaches. Visit our Resource Center to see a wide variety of different curriculum choices.

    Every state generally has a homeschool convention each year that is sponsored by a state support group. This can be a great place to find curriculum and find out more about ways to teach at home. Visit our State Support Group page and see if there is a local home school group in your area. These smaller support groups can be a tremendous help and may even offer a co-op where people bring their children together once a week to receive classes that they cannot offer themselves.

     Teaching your children at home is extremely rewarding as you watch your children learn in an atmosphere that fosters not only learning but also family relationships.