How to Start Homeschooling

One of the questions I’ve gotten about homeschooling from other mama’s is: How do you start? 

My answer is generally something like: “Did you teach your kid how to walk? We’ll you’ve already started homeschooling them.”

We start teaching them as soon as they can open those beautiful baby blue eyes and start looking at us.  But more likely the question is more about what curriculum to use or how to stay legal.

Here’s my steps in getting started:

• Ask around – find what others have done
• Get legal – find out what the requirements are for your state
• Figure out your style – there are a ton of options out there
• Figure out your schedule – this topic could fill a book – AND DOES!!

One of the best places to start is by asking around.  You more than likely know at least one person who is homeschooling their children or at least someone who is researching it.  I asked my friends on Facebook and got back a variety of responses – some positive, some negative.

Another great resource is the HSLDA which is a legal website and service.  It has information on the legal requirements of each state.

We’re using Calvert for our curriculum and I’ll talk more about why we’ve chosen this particular plan in another post.  It will blow your mind when you find out how many options you have for teaching your kids.  There’s online, off line, structured, unstructured, religious, non-religious, the choices can be staggering.  I’ll go into more detail about this soon.

Lastly, you need to figure out how you want school to work in your home.  Do you want to have school 5 days a week? 6?  Half days here and there to accommodate extracurricular activities or Homeschool co-ops?

There’s a ton of stuff to decide but don’t let that deter you.  You CAN do this.