The idea of taking full responsibility for your child’s education can be a little overwhelming. (That may be an understatement.) I had plenty of time to research state law and different homeschooling philosophies before we started homeschooling, since it was in our family plan for a few years before Poppy and Pete were even on the scene. So I figured I’d share a little of what I gleaned in that initial research and what I’ve learned since.
So here’s what you need to do to start homeschooling:
1. Learn about the legalities of homeschooling in your state.
2. Figure out how you want to approach homeschooling in your house.
3. Jump in.
The first step is simple. The second is going to take a little more thought and effort, but there are a lot of resources out there to help you figure it out. And of course the third step takes a deep breathe and a good deal of faith. I hope some of this is helpful whether you’re starting your homeschool adventure in pre-school or considering a fresh start with your eighth-grader.
Homeschooling regulations
We are U.S.-based, so my experience is entirely from an American perspective. Homeschooling has been legal in the United States since 1993, but some states are more restrictive than others. In North Dakota, for example, kids with low scores on standardized tests can be required to undergo a professional assessment, and in New York parents have to submit a detailed instruction plan at the beginning of the year as well as quarterly reports throughout. Meanwhile, states such as Idaho and Texas don’t even require you to tell anyone that you’re planning to homeschool.
Our state falls somewhere around moderate in terms of its homeschool regulations. We are required to notify the state department of non-public education that we intend to homeschool, and they recommend keeping a record of attendance and curriculum. The kids are also required to take a standardized test every year, which we can administer at home. The state does not require us to submit any of that information to their department, though, which would seem to me to defeat the purpose of requiring it.
For info on homeschooling in your state, check out:
Homeschool curriculum choices
There are at least 10,000 approaches to homeschooling, from “unschooling” to online schooling. Despite having planned to homeschool the kids for so long, I was nervous about whether or not I’d actually be able to do it when we started. So I bought a “curriculum in a box,” which gave me everything Poppy and I needed for kindergarten. Almost every step of every lesson had an accompanying script, which took a lot of the worry out of it for me for awhile. By the end of the year, though, I was ready for something outside of the box. So I started looking into other methods of homeschooling. I found that there are a ton of ways to go about teaching your kids at home. I’m not trying to reinvent the wheel today, so I’m going to point you to The Pioneer Woman for a good breakdown of some of the more prominent methods.
We don’t follow any particular methodology these days; we just do what works for the kids and their learning styles. That puts us in the category of Eclectic Homeschoolers, which means we take a little of this and a little of that from pretty much any approach to learning. In our house, that means our history studies follow a Classical approach, our math is more of a traditional classroom curriculum and our literature study wanders between classroom work and unschooling. I really like the eclectic approach because it frees us to find what works best for each child.
Jump in
I will stand next to the pool for an hour before I actually jump in, which means I am wildly unqualified to tell you how to Jump In to homeschooling. But know that you can do this, even if you have to dip your toe in by, say, trying it during the summer or something to ease yourself into it.
Do you have any questions about homeschooling? Let me know, and I’ll do my best to answer!