Wanting to homeschool, Info please...

[MrsRains]

Im a traveling SAHM of a 2yo son, 7mo son, and 20w pregnant with my 3rd son. I want to homeschool my kids but dont know where to get info about it or where to even look for info.

Being that my oldest is only 2yo I would like to get prepared and also maybe start him on some early learning. Can anyone of you moms help me out?

Thank you, Echo

[zjande]

What kind of info, specifically, are you looking for? Laws, curriculum, philosophies, organization? Secular or religious? Structured or unschooling?

I'd say the very 1st place to start is reading this whole forum back for pages & pages! It's so full of info. And also, Google the area you'll be living to see their homeschool laws & support groups.

[onyxravnos]

i like littleacornlearning.com as a base for 2 - 4 yr olds. basically a story, verses, and a craft each day following a weekly theme. Nothing to hard or rigid for the young ones but also fun and starts the 'schooling'

I also just started using sonlights p3/p4 which is basically a list of books roughly from 'easy' to 'hard' to read with your 3-4 yr old and from there you can do crafts around the books or discussion... (it is christan based but there are only 3 christan books in it so i just omit them.)

if you want to get your feet wet with some prepackaged things funshineexpress.com is AWSOME but on the expensive side. carols affordable curriculum is pretty good and priced well.

[MrsRains]

Originally Posted by zjande

What kind of info, specifically, are you looking for? Laws, curriculum, philosophies, organization? Secular or religious? Structured or unschooling?

Im looking to do structured, possibly Pagan based. Other then that I still have to keep getting info.

As for laws, do you know where I would find laws that would cover the USA in general? I stay in one state for no more then 6 months because of husbands job.

I tried googling but just got more lost. I guess it is because Im still new to all of this and need to learn my way around.

I will be moving this weekend to Texas but after that I will take your advice and read back on here for pages. Thank you

[MrsRains]

Thank you. I will look into the sites that you mentioned.

[zjande]

As far as I know, there aren't really any "federal homeschool laws". Each state has different laws, rules about who can homeschool & how records must be kept, whether tests must be taken, whether you must register, etc. I can't imagine having to research everything my new state requires every 6 mos, but ya gotta do what ya gotta do I guess. Good luck with it all! There have been some great suggestions here for curricula type stuff & activities.

As for Pagan based goodies, have you looked at the book called Circle Round? If not, you may want to look it up on amazon. The Charlotte Mason method is/can be very nature based, although it is not specifically Pagan at all (it's Christian). There's a Pagan curriculum thread going on in this forum somewhere as well...

[Lillian J]

There's no nationwide law - you'll have to go by those of one state. Do you use an address in one state for legal residency in regard to taxes, mail, etc? That would be the one - or you could even switch to another primary residence if you chose to. You can find state laws listed in these pages - the NHEN link in this post is dead, but the other two have good lists of the laws in regard to homeschooling.

Here's a page of articles on/by traveling homeschoolers.

Lillian

[onyxravnos]

i really like waldorf which has moments of christan-ness but then has moments of norse / celtic / egyption etc very nature / craft based. so i rather like it for pagan homeschooling. you might check out oak meadow or a little garden flower - they dont have an day by day for the preschool level but give you a general idea for waldorf schooling.


I also would go by the laws of whatever state you are a resident of. or if those laws are annoyingly hard switch your residence to a homeschool friendly state (doesn't matter since you move so much anyway i would think...)

circle round is a good book you might also check out spiral scouts.