If you’ve ever had any time in your children’s lives where you were homeschooling them, and you really enjoyed it, then you might be considering how you could make it permanent. OK. Homeschooling isn’t just a decision that you make overnight. You need to have the time, the temperament, the resources and the passion to home school and it shouldn’t interfere with how you work or what you need to do for yourself.
Homeschooling is a big job for anybody, but as a parent, it’s up to you to ensure that your child is going to reach adulthood knowing what they need to know as well as what they should be knowing at their age. There are a lot of decisions involved in deciding to home educate your children and the resources that you can gain from websites such as Learn Bright are huge! Nothing is so stringent that you need to have all of your ducks in a row before you get started. There is a step by step timeline that you can follow to make sure that your home education journey is going to be a positive one and we’ve listed those steps for you below.
Start with some good, thorough research.
With any decision you make in your life, you need to research it to know that it’s the right one. Whether your child is a baby moving into toddlerhood or already has several years of school under their belt and they hate it, some parents find the end of the school year is a good time to evaluate and research whether or not they would be able to homeschool their child. You can subscribe to magazines that talk about home education. You could visit the library, and you could even tag along to some local home education groups. What you’ll find is that the homeschooling community is much bigger than you thought it was. If you educate yourself about the routes that you can take to home educate your child, it will help you to make this decision easier. You have to remember that home education is not just about how you feel about their schooling, but how they feel about their schooling. If your child is happy in a mainstream school, then pulling them out to home educate probably isn’t the best decision. Speak to your child and understand what they would also want, especially if they’ve already got some years of schooling under their belts.
Research the local requirements.
Did you know that in the US, homeschooling rules and regulations can vary from state to state? Understanding what’s expected from you as a parent in the education department in your local state is important. Some parents in home education settings have to maintain attendance records and submit quarterly reports. You also may have to conduct standardized testing. Once you understand the local requirements, you might find it easier to make this decision. If you are elsewhere in the world and deciding to home educate, you still need to research the local requirements to see whether or not there is anything minimum expected of you. In the UK, for example, you are not expected to follow a standard curriculum, but your local council will still want to know what you are doing when it comes to home education and they may send an educational officer to your home to discuss it with you.
Join your local homeschooling group.
It can be so helpful to meet homeschoolers in your area and bring your child along with you. Not only will you be able to net some amazing information, you’ll be able to find other families who have been in your shoes before. They’ll talk you through there at home teaching habits and show you how homeschooling works for them. Of course, this may not be the way that you do things, but it’s always a nice idea to be able to see how other people do it.
Decide on the curriculum you’re going to follow.
You can either follow your local curriculum or you can purchase a curriculum through mail order catalogs. There are so many different ways to homeschool your child, and while you may not decide to go through the same standard curriculum as they do in school.You can still keep that as your core and work around it. There are conventions and curriculum fares that you can attend several times a year that showcase a huge range of homeschooling products.
If homeschooling is something that you enjoy, it should be something that you implement in your home. Why not look into it today?