You can un-school, de-school, or home school. There are other styles of home education, but those are a good basic three to being with. You’ll find information on the three within GoodByeCityLife. If you need to, ask questions in the comment form below.

Once you’ve decided on a style of education, craft a mission statement or plan of action. Now is the time to set certain ground rules and commit them to paper. Home schooling requires a lot of self-discipline. Having goals set to paper, no matter how lenient, help to keep the focus. Personal traits required for teacher and student are: an eagerness to learn, hard work and effort, discipline, time, patience, flexibility and an enthusiasm for sharing knowledge.

In your mission statement you might also want to record your motives, goals and reasons to home school your child. Don’t forget to get input from your sons or daughters and review your statement every few months to make sure you are on track.

Set Up Your Proposed Schedule

How many hours, how often, and on which days? Flexibility is one of the key underlying principles behind homeschooling, but 70% of humans thrive on schedules so this may be a concern for you and your home schooled child. It is only natural that parents, especially in the beginning, feel that their children should be at their books at the time that regular students are in school. That ‘feeling’ is the opposite of home schooling and can be counter-productive.

One of the most ignored but glaring drawbacks of the public schooling system is the sheer waste of time and energy that it promotes. Many periods are simply wasted away and the child effectively derives only 1-3 hours of study per day. There are days when the studies become too intense and other days when no work is performed at all. There is a lot of ‘invisible waste’ of hours in the public school system.

Not so with home schooling. There will be ample time for other activities or bonding time. Time spent actually preparing your child for real life. Not the boredom of a classroom.

Stick to your schedule for a few weeks, then reassess and rewrite if necessary.

The actual number of hours that you need depends on the curriculum you have chosen and the learning style that suits your child. If you are dealing with a subject that is more complex, you may need to sit with the child for a longer period. Using various techniques, it may be necessary to demonstrate what you are trying to teach. For instance, a difficult math lesson may take more time than the equivalent lesson in English.

Given the fact that too many public school hours are wasted in meaningless activities (waiting), extra-curricular activities that your child has no interest in, and ultimately boredom – do not allow public school hours to dictate the hours you’ll spend teaching your child at home. At home, he is getting high-quality, one-on-one lessons that are highly productive. About 1-3 hours of study is a good place to start in the primary grades, but let you child decide if he’d like to do more. The more enjoyable hours you put in, the more learning takes place.

Your child does not have to learn seven hours a day. Allow him to dictate the time after you’ve met your minimum. Flexibility and fun are the cornerstones of homeschooling. Do not stuff too many skills into a single term or year.

Homeschooling does not stop at lectures, books and tests. Field trips, documentaries on television, day to day life such as shopping and banking, and libraries also make up an important slice of the home schooling process – all of which has educational value. It makes sense to intersperse these activities so that learning becomes fun. You may want to finish off the few hours of textbook learning in the morning and dedicate the afternoons to these kinds of activities.

Compassionate and intuitive parenting is truly the secret to homeschooling success. Children make great advances in learning and show more enthusiasm when they are being led by love and respect. They also turn out to be surprisingly well balanced and well informed when they are taught at home.

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Some questions that will arise are if you should you study continuously throughout the year (5 days a week, 52 weeks per year) with a series of short breaks throughout, or if you should take a long vacation (such as the traditional two month summer break). Consider as well the long weekends, public holidays, or longer home school days and a four day week.

The answer to these questions are highly personal and are generally determined by whatever suits your family best. This freedom is yet another of the appealing benefits of home schooling. You are not governed to follow a system or pattern. You are not forced to take that summer or Christmas break, or a lengthy summer vacation. Flexibility is a bonus.

In fact seasoned ‘unschoolers’ seldom set a definite curriculum – although un-schooling is a step aside from average home schooling. With un-schooling, schedules and structure are not necessary because lessons are a part of their day-in, day-out lifestyles. You may not be comfortable with that freedom however, especially not in the beginning of your home schooling journey.

Questions to Ask About Home School Schedules

Therefore, before you begin planning the structure of your classes and schedule (daily or annually), consider some of the more important issues. What method of home schooling will you follow? What is your teaching style? Your child’s learning style?

What Are Your Family Members Work and Vacation Schedules?

Some families plan small 1-week vacations at different times of the year and plan their trips around study activities. Other families prefer to go away for a month or more for a real break from stressful lives.

You may decide not to ‘throw out the baby with the bath water’. There are, after all, some positive benefits in following the traditional summer vacation schedule.

First, your children can benefit from various summer camps, sports activities, and classes if their summer months are free. Also, your child or children’s schedule can coincide with that of his school-going peers. When they are older, a summer job might be a possibility. And finally, a long summer break from home schooling also means that both parents as well as children get a break from their daily lessons in the best weather.

Our Home School Schedule

Our small family enjoys many mini-vacations throughout the year and we tie these breaks into learning activities – relating to earlier lessons. This way our daughter feels she has more rewards to look forward to, does not get bored with strict lesson plans and schedules, and has more time to explore personal interests.

Furthermore, our family trips save money are they happen during less popular periods of travel. This also means that while on holdiay we aren’t as over-whelmed by crowds at attractions, museums, and amusement parks.

As far as home schooling is concerned, you and your family are in complete control. Taking care of the individual needs of the child within your family unit is the primary focus of home schooling. Tailor the school year to suit your particular needs. Set some realistic goals and see if you are able to achieve these goals with the schedule you choose.

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Socialization is hailed by public school supports as the greatest advantage to typical schooling. Yet this is the place where some of the worst habits and insecurities are picked up by our children!

Public school supporters say that school is the place where a child picks up the rudiments of social skills that will help him survive later in life. Yet in truth, a regular school attending girl or boy can interact only with his peers. He or she may bully younger children or fear older ones. He or she does not know how to interact authentically with an adult.

These are just two of many reasons public schools do not service our children’s social capabilities well. In the school environment our boys and girls are interacting only with their peers.

On the other side, home schooling environments bring in a more natural social environment.

Public Schooling is Unnatural Learning

There is no other time in a person’s life where they are forced to interact only with people their own age. It is completely unnatural. Therefore the ’social’ stigma of non home schooling parents is eradicated.

A regular schooled child cannot read literature, keep silent, or think in depth about any one topic. This artificial education style, imposed upon him by the school, disallows quiet contemplation. Rowdy and destructive behavior from peers as well as perpetual noise from the teachers, are far too common.

There is little long-standing knowledge among regular school goers because most facts are learnt solely for the exam. There is no association of these facts with everyday life. The child may know a lot, but understands very little when the time arrives to be functional in society. This is where the home schooling families excel. Ultimately, homeschoolers emerge more adept at facing the outside world.

Is Home Schooling Legal?

As I write this, home schooling is legal in all 50 States of the U.S. as well as Canada. However laws and regulations regarding home schooling vary from state to state, province to province. Furthermore, interpretations of these laws can vary from one school district to the next. These laws are often changed and revised on a regular basis.

I might suggest checking out state laws regarding home schooling before you begin to educate your sons and daughters at home to prevent any surprises by the authorities.

Who Is the Home Schooling Teacher?

The teacher is the key to the success in home schooling. In most cases, the teacher is a parent or relative. In some cases, parents divide the subjects between them, hire a home school teacher, or join a group of homeschoolers in their area and pool their resources between families. Whatever your situation, children need time with their parents. Parents, as a rule, make very good teachers for their home schooled children.

Teaching does not require a degree nor does the style require a clinical presentation of facts. Learning has to be integrated lovingly into daily life for it to interest the child. If you feel anxious about your skill or knowledge, relax.

You Are Not Alone in Home Schooling

There are countless home-schooling resources that are aimed at helping you. Professional curriculum packages, support groups, online help via websites, virtual schools and library resources are all available resources to the home schooling family. When you start out, you may want to make use of the commercial curriculum packages. Specialized software allows you to record and log important achievements and lessons learned.

Laura Childs
Another Home Schooling Mom

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Symptoms of burnout vary from a lack of patience during lessons to overeating or emotional instability without any apparent reason.

Stressing Over Home Schooling – Just A Wake Up Call

Surprisingly, a home school related burnout need not be such a bad thing. This can serve as a wake-up call – an indicator that perhaps the home schooling is not going as well as planned, and that a new curriculum or schedule is required. Reversing or avoiding a burnout is possible if you pay attention to the early warning signs.

Some good first steps, if you feel a burn out coming on, is to consider lowering your expectations. Many new home schooling parents strive for perfection and then become depressed or disappointed with the results. Learn to take good days with the bad.

Next, when a lesson or lesson plan does not seem to take ground, look for alternative methods to educate or inform. Flexibility is a key factor to successful home schooling. If tension begins to mount just take a break until you come up with a new plan of action. You may consider changing your style of teaching as well as your lesson plans.

Another consideration is to avoid packing too many ‘extra’ activities into your curriculum merely for the sake of socialization. A worn out mom usually equals an uncooperative child. No matter where you are in the world you have multiple avenues for support when you are tired, burnt out, or discouraged. Get help from your spouse, a neighbor, or even a home schoolers support group. You don’t need to be in this all by your self.

Home schooling means happy schooling.

If the Stress is Too High, Consider Unschooling

Unschooling is another style of home schooling that doesn’t get much press anymore. However it is a viable alternative to rigid educational styles at home.

There are no curriculum and no boundaries in unschooling. Many new-to-home-school parents feel apprehensive about such freedom. But, when explored, unschooling has certain guidelines that make it a great method.

The gist is to allow your child to express their interests and select the topics. If he or she wants to learn about plants, educate about the various grains and seeds, their functions, parts of the plant and so on. Just keep it appropriate for their age group and don’t overwhelm with facts and tests. Allow children the freedom to stop when satiated.

In unschooling, parents expand their child’s areas of interests with the use of books, videos, internet resources, fun quizzes, magazines and games when available. Simultaneously, broaden your own interests. The more you know and/or are excited about learning yourself, the more your child learns.

Un-schoolers are astutely aware of all opportunities for learning in daily life. When in the kitchen preparing a snack or meal, they discuss the vitamins in fruits and vegetables. Or what makes tomatoes red, lettuce green and how leafy vegetables benefit the human body. One area of interested and engaged learning leads to the next this way.

Laura Childs

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