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How to homeschool:
1) Figure out, in your state, what you are required to do to be a "registered teacher" for homeschooling. You might need to take a class. I did, and it was eye-opening, affirming, and awesome. I hope whatever you need to do is a positive experience as well.
2) Also figure out, for your state, what kind of forms you need to fill out in order to register your child for homeschool that year. Laws might change year to year, and you'll need to fill out something that simply tells the public school not to expect your child in public school that school year.
3) Teach your kid and make the experience awesome!
• Homeschool organizations exist to help with socialization opportunities, field trips, cross teaching, and more. Hopefully in your neck of the woods an awesome org exists! We found one and it made all the difference even though we fall on the introverted side of life! Understandably, our homeschool org had several ex-teachers within it, who wanted better for their own childrern than what they witnessed themselves in public school! These teachers also offered chemistry and other specialty classes. A good homeschool org can make a huge difference in your educational experience.
• There are tons of on-line freebie resources that can give you plans, ideas, and printable resources! Stop thinking it is "public school at home" with a desk and a clock on the wall. It doesn't have to be. I feel it shouldn't be, for we can do better.
• There are tons of purchasable books, and physical tools and helps for both teacher and child. With textbooks, find a brand or type you like and also switch it up - a kid might really struggle with a math book one year, and find it easy as gravy next year. Don't give up on finding resources that click with your kid and their particular learning style! The brain is developing and you get to find curriculum that works with their current level. Unlike public school, where textbooks are "one size should fit all".
4) Depending on what requirements are in your state, have your child evaluated or tested each year to "prove" to the state they are actually learning (and not just playing video games or being neglected all school year). It is only logical the state would want to make sure your child is actually being educated.
5) Keep up the good work and enjoy having an awesome and educated kid at the end of the process!
Unique positive aspects of homeschooling vs. public education. An opinion.
Escape from Limitations in Education - homeschooling gets to take advantage of the mind's open door. In public school, there might be that one subject the child really enjoys learning for a time. But alas, 45 minutes is over and they have to head to the next class. The open door of that subject that piques their interest gets a meager amount of time to influence them. Let's say the child's mind has an open door to the subject of geography. The child is literally absorbing maps, pooring through atlases, and is excited about journeys, mapping and charting them. As a homeschooling parent, you can make math, language arts, history, creative arts, and reading all cater to this recently opened door of the mind. Now, the kid is loving every class. Every class relates to their educational passion! In a few months, they seem to navigate to a new open door, their love of maps has morphed into archaeology. As a sensitive parent, you can watch their mind shift and grow into new areas, introduce them to new or related things, and watch sparks fly every day. This kind of educational discovery journey is very gratifying to both parent and child. As a publicly-schooled kid, I see the loss of potential in my own experience back then. What really fired me up, was such a minuscule slot in the schedule of my weekly school life. And more often, nothing sparked in me at all. There is such loss of potential and loss of opportunity by the over-populated need-to-cater-to-all school system. There is such an advantage in the homeschool lifestyle when it comes to opportunities of this type! This love of learning can easily become their life-long lifestyle.
Escape from Social Limitations - in a public school, you generally are in a huge unnatural group of same-age peers which can have a negative outcome to socialization. In the best homeschool environment, you might have different aged kids, grandparents, neighbors, and others to interact with regularly, which can help teach the child to operate in the real world. A homeschool org helps here too, if they have monthly meetings, science fairs, music groups, and the like. In the public system, kids are kept in large age-related groups all up through high school or college, and they are afterwards forced to adjust to the "real world" with sometimes bad experiences in the workforce "helping" them to adjust to a more mature mindset of socializing with others not in their peer group. With homeschooling, you taught your child to live in the real world from a young age. They might belong to small club groups where the child gets to interact with adult peers without competition for that interaction. There might be individual lessons that brought in other adults, or other regular activities that exposed them to working with older people. A publicly schooled kid listen to a teacher at the head of the class. A well-homeschooled kid interacts regularly with everyone from the librarian, grocery or other store checkout counter person, field trip guides, selling their own crafts at fairs to learn business economics, other homeschool parents you co-educate with, other homeschool ex-teachers that offer small group specialty classes, and so on, for instead of being in a 30 person crowd in a closed room, typically, mom took you around town to do some out of home lessons in the real world, weekly. Throughout their time of schooling, these interactions added up and taught them to work with a diverse set of people. In a locked-in-with-my-peers-all-day situation, that peer group mentality becomes the new norm. With homeschooling, peers are not seen as the "value crowd" and other age groups "the enemy" or "non-value crowd". Do you remember that aspect of social life as a public high school student yourself? I do. The peer culture as a cult mentality is reinforced there. Rather, your kids could learn to interact and appreciate diverse age groups from the start. As a severe introvert, public school was horrifying for me on the social level. I wanted a better way for my child.
Escape bullying and abuse - public school in the 20's, 30's, 40's, and even 50's was drastically different than schools of today. A friend once told me, "School was so different then. There was more innocence in general. No one, and I mean no one ever cursed in our public school. It just wasn't something that occurred to you even to do. If you hit your thumb with a hammer, it didn't even occur to you that you needed to say a curse word because of it." School "socialization" used to be more positive. Now, between the degradation of casual human speech, occurrences of bullying via social media, and sometimes downright aggressive children now in public schools, that so called "social network" might not work for an average kid who just wants to skip the drama and receive a decent education. With homeschooling, you have better guidance and control over your child's friendships. Beware, some kids who are forced to drop out of school because they themselves are aggressors, enter homeschooling as well. If you join a homeschool organization, you can find good kids to befriend, but never make assumptions and stay alert. Good friendships are gold, and always have been, but that gold is becoming more rare to find in public schools. I myself was physically abused by others, in 1st grade, middle school, and in high school by 4 different kids. That was decades ago, and I bet school hasn't become more innocent since then. I didn't want my daughter to experience possible abuse. I wanted a better childhood for her.
Escape from Herd mentality - we all have to go to class x, we all now have to go to class y. Public schools teach kids to live, moan, groan, and complain, within a controlled-by-the-system herd, and be governed by schedules and clocks, accepting their fate because it is what we all have to do to complete the system. With homeschooling, this does not exist, and your child gets individualized schooling in a flexible schedule. Does your child long for a steady schedule? You get to give that to them, tailored to their needs (more time for class x, less time in class y, for whatever reason). Tailored every year. Tailored every week. Does your child yearn for less scheduling and more variety of motion? You get to give that to them. As a child, I hated the herding, 45 minutes per class routine. There was no choice, it was all the public school could offer, having to "handle" hundreds of people every day. Homeschooling offers a way out of that locked-in-prison herd mentality altogether.
Healther sleep, healthier food - the sleep schedule needs of a 7 year old are vastly different than a 17 year old. Have you looked into the medical science of the best sleep schedules for youth at different ages? What public schools demand of teenagers, in order to get to school on time and be productive isn't even healthy for them. You get to control the homeschool schedule, even if it means sleeping in. Healthier kid, healthier you. Overall, the control you get to have, to help your child have both a healthy sleep schedule and meal routine is superior to what any public school offers. No one is suprised by this fact, but no school is changing their ways. Now, why is that?
I don't hate teachers in our public school system, I don't hate public schools. I don't hate the city or our laws. But I hated my experience inside public school as a student, and I wanted a better life for my kid. If that describes you too, go get 'em tiger. We can do all things through Jesus Christ who strengthens us!