No matter how damaging or harmful — or boring — public school is for their children, many people feel they cannot transition to homeschooling. It's unknown. It's unfamiliar. It's scary. (Not to mention weird.)
They think they need to plan and prepare and research and coordinate for weeks, months, or years before they finally dip their toes into homeschooling. But it's just not so.
If you know your children aren't thriving in school — and you know it's not getting better anytime soon, in spite of your best efforts — now is the time to take action. It's really not all that hard or involved. The process is pretty straightforward.
Yes, you really can do it. And you can refine the process as you go, with real-time data.
Here are your 12 easy steps to start homeschooling. Tomorrow. Or sooner.
- Pull them out of school. Now. (Complying only with actual, legal requirements to do so — not to be confused with the imagined authority some school administrators imply.)
- Get ice cream. Or donuts. Or wheat grass smoothies. Or something.
- Give hugs.
- Start getting plenty of sleep. (This can be an enormous issue with teens in school!)
- Have some exercise time every day doing something fun. (We love Just Dance!)
- Plan out some nutritious menus with your kids and continue/start healthy habits.
- Go to the library and let them pick as many books as they like. Read. Read. Did I mention read?
- Play great music. Or better, perform great music. But have great music.
- Start making general, flexible, long-term educational goals. (Any age child can and should contribute to this, but the older your kids are, the more input they should have.)
- Work back from the long-term to short-term goals to today's goals.
- Figure out ways that both you and your kids can be happy and satisfied, while reaching these goals. There are always other methods, other texts, other resources, to reach a properly formed goal!
- Enjoy the journey!
If you agree that homeschooling isn't the enormous deal the teachers' unions want people to think it is, please share this in your social media. Spread the word!
One of the most concise bits of homeschool advice I’ve seen. Exactly right. It’s just not that big of a deal. It’s getting out of the brainwashing that’s hard.
Love this – a plan that works with any style/ philosophy for educating at home. I would only add find other homeschool friends for support and ideas.
You hit on one of the most important aspects of beginning to homeschooling — relax. It takes the family up to three months to de-program from the routines and rigors of attending a traditional school. These steps really will help in the success of a family’s schooling.
Karen and Melissa, thank you for the kind words. Yes, find those who support you to help you along your path!
Susan, if we give up all those very “schooly” notions that really don’t have anything to do with becoming educated, finding our way isn’t such an onerous task. In fact, it’s quite enjoyable!
I agree! Great advice. I’ve been homeschooling our five children from the beginning and we find it to be such a wonderful adventure. My best advice is don’t try to replicate school (yawn!!!) and give the kids as much input into their learning as you can.
Pinterest can be a great place to find support and ideas (not to mention tons of freebies) too. I have zillions of homeschool ideas pinned on Pinterest for all subjects and ages at http://www.pinterest.com/magicandmayhem. The only bad thing is you can find too much. 🙂
~Alicia
Practical and wise. The problem is that most people think it has to be harder. It does not!