Starting Your Homeschool

For some reason you've decided to homeschool.

Is it because you don't like or agree with the curriculum of the public schools? Or maybe you don't want your child to be exposed to peer pressure before you've taught your child right and wrong?

Possibly it's because you'd like for your child to attend private school but you just don't have the finances to afford it.

Another possibility is that your child is a special needs child, maybe slower than normal, and you don't trust the public schools to give him/her the special attention that you know they will need.

Whatever the reason, you've decided that you, as a parent, can do a better job of attending to and nurturing your child's educational growth and learning than other alternatives available to you.

If you're new to this, you'll find that the biggest problem that you'll encounter is that there's almost no way to generalize the home school concept, because each case is different. There is no right and wrong. In fact - probably one of the unstated reasons you've chosen to do home schooling and one of the main benefits is that you get to pretty much create your own set of right and wrong rules.

You set the curriculum. And depending on what state you live in, you choose the instructional materials, the books, the hours, and so on.

And on the negative side, when you run into difficulties with your students (i.e., your kids) you and your family will have to resolve them yourself, with little or no help from the state.

No matter what your approach there are two things you are going to have to do:

1. You're going to have to educate yourself about home schooling. This means renting or buying home school educational dvds. You should also make it a point to read books written by ordinary people who have gone through the very things you're about to so you can avoid making their mistakes with your kids.

2. There is no nationwide agreement on what a home school accreditation program should look like or include. Each state, municipality, and school district is different. Unavoidably, you're going to have to become familiar with and abide by the statues governing homeschooling in your particular state.

Aside from those two things, I think the basic thing you can give your home school child is a loving and supporting "classroom" environment .