So you want to homeschool? If you have found your way here I am assuming that you are new to this so I will start at the beginning and try my hardest to help you to figure everything out.
Homeschooling, or merely even the thought of it can be overwhelming and fear inducing. It is always hard to stray from the norm or to do something that you have no experience in. It is even scarier when you lack of experience will directly affect your children.
Did I put you off already? sorry I didn’t meant too! Just trying to validate your feelings because I have been there too and it is totally scary!
Know Why You are Homeschooling
Before you even jump into anything else you need to know why you are doing it. There are a million and one reasons why people homeschool and chances are your reasons are going to be completely different to the person next to you. There is even a pretty good chance that these reasons will change over time.
I would recommend writing down why you are homeschooling and what it is you hope to accomplish from it. I have found this task to be such a blessing down the road. When I am having a particularly hard day and I feel like I am failing miserably I look back on that list and it gives me the motivation and kick up the bum I need to keep going.
I find that by writing it down on paper I can more easily express my thoughts and detangle all the thoughts that are swimming around in my head. You will be most certainly asked “oh so why are you homeschooling?” by everyone from family to the lady in the produce department of the store. If you have already written in down you can confidently and articulately reply instead of mumbling out some convoluted response like I used to do. It was embarrassing, and then I would spend the rest of the day going over the conversation in my head. Now I have a pretty standard response “It is what works for our family”
Being firm in your reasoning helps to give you a direction as to which path you want to take. Did you remove your child from school due to bullying? perhaps instead of academics you want to take some time to really focus on boosting that child’s confidence and self worth back up again. I would definitely want to look into deschooling too if that was the case.
Homeschooling Laws
If you are going to homeschool you want to do it legally. I can not stress how important it is to stay on the right side of the law with this. It is by no means illegal to homeschool but still some parents try to fly under the radar and the ramifications should they get caught are a bit scary.
What you need to do is look up homeschooling laws where you live. Different states have different requirements. Some states just require you to send a letter on intent to the school district, others require yearly testing or to log work hours. Where we live 10% of families are audited each year and need to show proof of learning happening. We do this by submitting a portfolio of work the children have completed through the year.
Decide What Method to Use
There is no one right way to homeschool. There are however lots of different methods to choose from or you can be super creative and mix things up. The possibilities are endless!
- Unschooling: A child led approach to education. The child directs their own learning based on what interests them. As a parent you facilitate the learning by offering experiences, books and resources as well as your continued support.
- Charlotte Mason: An educations philosophy developed by Charlotte Mason which is based on the belief that we need to educate the whole child not merely just the mind. This approach teaches good habits, a focus on high quality literature and a love of nature.
- Waldorf: This type of education was developed by Rudolf Steiner (also called Steiner education). The early years of this method involve a lot of play based and imaginative learning up until the age of seven. Only then are academics introduced. Imagination, art and creativity both in thinking and art are prominent here.
- Eclectic Homeschooling: Eclectic homeschoolers take the best from everywhere to create a education that best suits their child. They mix and match, taking what they love and leaving what they don’t from each homeschooling method. A lot of homeschoolers fit into this category.
- Traditional Homeschool: Is what you probably imagine when you envision a homeschool. You would usually buy a boxed curriculum and complete each task much like you would in a classroom. There are so many amazing curriculums out there if you wanted to go this route.
- Online School: This is pretty much school at home. You will have your course work assigned along with a teacher to oversee and mark assignments. There are many online schools that allow you to attend classes virtually via video link. Online schools are becoming increasingly popular and there are a variety to choose from.
As you can see there are so many different options!
How Much Does Homeschooling Cost?
This is a questions much like “how long is a piece of string?” The honest truth is that it can cost as much or as little as you like. If I wanted to take a guess I would say that the average was around $500-700 per child per year including all the books, field trips and extra classes they might take. I spent about $2k this past year on three children.
You will also need to take into account the loss of income from having one parent stay home to teach the children. Lots of homeschooling parents have side hustles they do to bring in a bit of extra cash to help support the family from home. I am gathering information at the moment to share with you some of the best side hustles for homeschooling parents. I will share the link here when I am done.
You can homeschool for free. You will want to check out this post about all the free ways to homeschool. There are so many free and very very cheap resources available to homeschooling families. Don’t let your budget or lack there of stop you from going ahead with homeschooling if that is what you feel you want to do.
There are many umbrella schools that can provide funding for homeschooled children. Technically they are still enrolled in a school and you will have a some who will oversee things but you can choose how the money they give you is spent. They generally only allow secular materials but you can purchase your own faith based materials to use. You could then use they money they provide for school supplies like laptops, classes, printers, ink computer programs like photoshops etc.
Can I Start Homeschooling My Child Mid-Year?
Yes you can. There is no legal reason you can not remove you child from school whenever you like. Look up the laws for your state and they will be able to tell you the process you need to take.
If it has been a very quick removal for whatever reason don’t stress to much about figuring our what you are going to do learning wise. It is very very important that children who have been taken out of the school system to have a period of Deschooling.
Deschooling allows the child and yourself some time to adjust to this new method of learning. The school system is very regimented and test heavy. Children are used to being scheduled for every moment of their day. They will almost always find the freedom and dare I say it boredom of homeschool unnerving and frustrating. Give them the chance to adjust. You will find that they will soon seek out learning and their creativity will take over and boredom will soon be a thing of the past. They say that for every year in public school, allow 1 month of deschooling. You can read a more in depth guide and reasoning here.
Find Support
Homeschooling can get really lonely really fast despite the fact that you have company 24/7. First and foremost the biggest support you need is from your partner/husband/wife etc. If you don’t have one of those then finding a solid support network is even more important.
You don’t have to even go meet people face to face (super awkward for me at first!). There are so many Facebook groups you can join full of other homeschooling parents. They are a wealth of knowledge and support. They “get” it. They will celebrate you wins and commiserate your losses with you.
Homeschoolers are also wonderful at organising field trips, classes, play dates, proms, graduations, dances, camps and a million other things. There are lots of groups you can join where you can find like minded parents and children.
Creating a Schedule
I made and entire post about this earlier which I would highly recommend you go and read because it goes into so much more detail than what I can fit in here.
Setting up a schedule that works for your family is a great way to get your homeschool off on the right note. It helps your children know what to expect to happen each day and the day will flow with more ease. Both children and parents alike benefit from a schedule of sorts even if it is a lose schedule.
There are lots of different ways to schedule your year and your days. What we works for us in our home is doing a four day work week. We take Fridays off to go on field trips, do project work, catch up on work that was missed during the week, run errands, do big art projects and generally keep things light and fun.
How Many Hours Do I have to Homeschool
You would be surprised how much you can accomplish in a short amount of time. In schools class sizes range from around 15-35 students to one teacher. In a homeschool that class size is reduced to however many kids are at home. There is more one on one tuition so things happen faster. A lot of what happens in schools is behaviour management and organisation “get out your books”, “line up” “Freddy stop kicking the chairs” etc
Some states do require you record hours. For example New York state requires 900 hours per school year and 180 days. That doesn’t mean they need to be seated at a desk for 900 hours a year, that means they need you to show that they were engaged in some kind of educational activity for 900 hours a year. Which works out to 5 hours per day. There are lots of ways to accomplish this. There are however very few states that have this requirement.
My children work on formal work for 2 hours a day on average. As they get older I can see that increasing especially if they become very much engaged and intrigued by the subject matter. The rest of the day they are pursuing their own interests and passions, playing or we are out attending classes with other homeschooled children, reading, or going on bike rides or hiking.
How many hours you do in generally up to you. You can do it in short spurts through out the day or you can knuckle down and get it all over and done with before lunch. One thing you will find as you start homeschooling is that learning never really stops once you put the books away. Children are curious creatures and will keep learning and discovering even once formal lessons are finished.
Set Your Goals
Just like in school, goal setting in homeschool is equally as valuable. I like to set goals in different areas for each of my children. Academic goals, spiritual goals and growth goals (there’s a better word for growth goals I just can’t think of it. Like maturity and how they behave sort of goals).
I will use my five year old as an example. This past school year she was in kindergarten, my main academic goal for her was to get her reading by herself. She was definitely ready and I knew that with a bit of hard work we would get there, and we did. My spiritual goal I set for her was to become more thoughtful in her prayers instead of just saying the same thing each and every time. Her growth goals we set were for her to become confident at being away from us and her siblings for a few hours at a time. This was a big one for her as she has suffers from anxiety. She has done fantastic with this and happily attends a choir class each week completely unaccompanied and has sung in several big concerts where she was away from us for a whole day.
I have found that it is incredibly valuable to have your child help you set these goals. They may have completely different ideas to you and that is okay. They are much more likely to work harder towards a goal that they have set themselves. Work together and things will be much easier.
Can My Child Still Play Sports If They are Homeschooled?
In many cases it is entirely possible for children to participate in high school sports or music. Many schools allow kids to enrol in school part time. Lots of teenagers go to the local high school and do elective classes while doing their core classes at home. Can you imagine a whole day of electives!? You can kind of get the best of both world here. Doing this also provide your children with a free way to take some classes in things that they are really interested in. Also it is a way to test out interests without having to fully commit their parents money to something they may or may not love.
Each state is different in what they allow. A quick google search will let you know what you can participate in. Even if your state doesn’t allow it there are many homeschool sports teams that could fill that gap. Remember, where there is a will there is a way!
Create Traditions
We love traditions in this house and school traditions are no different. At the start of every school year we take the obligatory first day of school photos. I don’t care what anyone says they are adorable and I love looking back on them.
On the weekend before school starts we have a back to school party and dinner. It is helps everyone get excited about the new year and the fun things we will be doing.
Next year I plan on taking each child out on a date so we can do our goal setting. I think this will be something special where I can get that one on one time with each child to see what it is that they want to accomplish this year. If we can get out goals to match up even better.
Read, Read and Read Some More
Children love to be read to, even those big teenagers. Your children will learn so much from just listening you read to them. Books and the ability to read opens up the world to children. The don’t need to wait to be taught something, they can simply read for themselves. This makes learning so much more exciting and engaging for children. My oldest child blows me away with some of the things he has read and researched on his own. His knowledge far surpasses mine on many subjects.
Audiobooks are a great way to broaden children’s minds. I find audiobooks are fantastic especially for those younger children who aren’t able to read fluently yet. Children have a far greater ability to comprehend language well before they can read it. Nourish their minds with good books. Even my 3 year old loves to listen to longer audiobooks, we just finished up Nim’s Island which he loved. You can usually borrow audiobooks from your library but my personal favourite and what we use is the Audible app. It’s about $10 a month and you get a book credit each month and you get a lot of free books and books for 99c. I really can’t fault it.
First Day of Homeschool
Now that you are all prepared there is nothing left to do but to jump right in. That first day may go wonderfully or it may be a complete disaster. I remember my first few weeks were nothing to skite about. I am not sure how much we actually accomplished but we made it through and we all survived no worse for wear.
Don’t be too hard on yourself if it isn’t perfect straight away. When you start something new, very rarely does it turn out well first time around. It takes time, practice and a whole lot of humour.
Can My Child Return to School After Being Homeschooled?
Sure they can. There is no rule that says once a child is homeschooled they must remain that way. You would enrol them in school just as you would any other child. You may encounter difficulties if your child is working at a different grade level than what their age would indicate. Generally they would be required to go into the grade level based on their age.
There are lots of reasons that you may want to enrol your child in school and you should feel no shame about doing so. Your children are yours and you know what is best for your family.
So there you have it. How to Homeschool. It is by no means an exhaustive list but I hope it gives you a starting platform to build on. Sometimes you can get all the advice in the world but you wont truly know what works until you jump off that cliff. If there is anything I can do to help you on your journey don’t hesitate to get in touch. I am more than happy to answer emails or have a chat. You may also want to check out this post about the 5 Things I wish I knew before I started homeschooling.
