Should you Homeschool?

Should you homeschool your child(ren)? That is the question that no one else can answer, but you. I am not going to try and convince you to homeschool or even give you a long pros and con list. There are many reasons to homeschool your children. Reasons range from unsatisfied with the public school system in your city, your child is getting bullied and hit, cannot afford to put your child in a private school setting, religious reasons, or you just do not feel your child’s needs are being met. The reason is yours and I cannot tell you if it is a good reason or not. I personally do not think there is a bad reason to home school your child. The biggest question and the real one that stops families from homeschooling is financial. The first question should be, “can you afford to home school your child(ren)?” That is the biggest drawback and the one thing that stops most people from homeschooling.

Now you can work and homeschool your child(ren). It will be rough or should I say can be rough. There are a couple of ways that I know of that you can still work and home school your children. The first is having your parent, the child’s grandparent, be with the child(ren) and teach the child while you work. This was how I managed to home school my child, the first three years. I was blessed with having a mother that not only was retired, so she could actually be my homeschool teacher, but we got along well enough to make it work. And even though you are not actually your child’s teacher you have to put in a lot of hours planning, documenting, and researching curriculum. Depending on your relationship with your parent who is helping you out, it can be more or less stressful. The second way a working parent can homeschool would be taking advantage of teaching odd hours. You do not have to have your school sessions Monday through Friday from 8:00 am to 3:00 pm. When first looking into home schooling I counted out the hours as if I was going to do it myself with differing school hours. You can actually teach your child four hours (any hours and does not need to be consecutive) -five days a week (any days) and still have four weeks of vacation time and manage the amount of hours necessary for the state requirements (875 hours). The one drawback to the second one is again financial to some degree. If you have younger children, under the age of 12 years, you still need someone to watch them while you are at work. Now since you have been doing this for childcare already while you are at work you should still have the financial means to find someone to watch your child while you are at work. You could even have them do some of your instruction and field trips during the day.

Now if you can manage the financial problem and work out the logistics you are almost there for homeschooling your children. Now are there anymore questions on should you homeschool your children? Yes of course there are many more. The biggest one is the socialization concern. I think this is foolish. I think people are more concerned about the “memories” of the traditional school setting, especially in high school. And socialization should not be a concern at all. Now if it truly is socialization as a concern you shouldn’t worry. You can take your child(ren) out and about everyday to meet people of all ages in a more realistic social environment. School is the only time that a person is in a controlled environment with children of the same age group to interact with throughout the majority of the day. Homeschooling is more natural. And I just want to point out that parents are commended for staying home and watching their infants before they are sent off to school, why shouldn’t we be commended for taking it one step further and staying home with our children throughout their whole childhood.

I am sorry I am going on and I said I wouldn’t try and convince people to home school. It really is a family choice. It is just like any choice, for example, to have children in the first place, what religion you are, or to be a vegetarian or not, and the list goes on. The choice is yours to homeschool or not and might not be right for your family for any number of reasons. Homeschooling really isn’t for every family. It isn’t just because of the amount of dedication and commitment it takes, but because of your background and belief system. There are many of great schools out there and just as many children graduating from them with honors with a great future ahead of them all.

________________________________________________________________________________

The process is relatively simple at

one end and at the other it is extremely hard.

What does that mean?

Looking at the State regulations for

Wisconsin you just need to send in your intention to home school.

That is the simple part. The hard part is doing it,

while feeling comfortable and confident.

It took me a couple of years before

I felt comfortable and confident in my choice.

First, you need to decide on your school philosophy,

whether you are going to do more of

an unschooling approach or more traditional, or a bit of a mix.

Secondly, you need to find the right curriculum or materials for not only your child and family, but your philosophy choice.

Many families pick and choose from a variety of different sources.

Some families pick one that is all encompassing

and you send in the items to get graded,

a more traditional philosophy.

This is up to you and how comfortable you feel

on grading and keeping the documentation that you need.

Third, after figuring out the curriculum there is the documentation of your hours as a whole (875 hours )

as well as for each area needed according to the state.

I think the documentation is harder for

unschooling than the traditional approach.

Although, unschooling curriculum would

be more fun and is usually less expensive.

Whichever you decide it is what is best for you and your family.

The state requires Wisconsin to teach reading, language arts, mathematics, social studies, science, and health

with a total of 875 hours of instruction per year. Wisconsin does not state how many hours you need in each area.

Lastly, the fun part is the teaching and exploring things

with your children and learning as you go.

The other un-fun part is that you have to constantly be revising and updating your curriculum.

________________

If you want to add an idea or a thought

just email me and I would easily add it to the page!

Can you homeschool through high school?

The answer is YES of course you can and here are some statistics to prove it.

Here is the link for statistics on HomeSchooling.