finding local support

[onlyzombiecat]

Do you belong to a homeschool group?

How far away do you go to find "local" homeschool support groups? How often do you meet with them?

For those unable to find other homeschoolers (or maybe just likeminded homeschoolers) nearby, what do you do for support?

Has anyone started their own support group? If so, how did you start and did it go well?

[SagMom]

Originally Posted by onlyzombiecat

Do you belong to a homeschool group?

How far away do you go to find "local" homeschool support groups? How often do you meet with them?

For those unable to find other homeschoolers (or maybe just likeminded homeschoolers) nearby, what do you do for support?

Has anyone started their own support group? If so, how did you start and did it go well?

"Local" for us, is a half hour drive. We drive as much as an hour for some groups. Some meet monthly, others weekly or bi-weekly. We've belonged to a number of different groups, off and on, since we started 5 years ago and are just now getting settled with a core group of friends. I get a lot of support online.

I've organized some successful homeschool park days, but not an actual support group--it's just a casual thing. It started with a couple of other homeschoolers who all just said, "We should go to the park" and then I posted it on some statewide Yahoo lists and things grew from there. (Unfortunately, it's been so freakin hot and humid that no one wants to run around outside these days so we'll start up again when the weather breaks.)

[stafl]

google "your town, homeschool, support, group" and you should find stuff.
Go to www.groups.yahoo.com and you should find even more.

Our homeschool group has regularly scheduled meetings twice a month, and other activities (some scheduled, some spontaneous) in between. They are right here in town where I live so I usually drive about 20 minutes to get wherever they are meeting, depending on the location it might be closer or it might be a bit further away. We have really really bad public schools, so there are literally dozens of homeschool support groups from which to choose.

[onlyzombiecat]

We live in a rural area. All the support groups I've found so far are at least an hour or more drive away. I've joined a state homeschool yahoo group but no one seems to be near us. I'll keep looking but I'm guessing the majority of our support will be online.

[immortal ambition]

There weren't really any in our area, so I started my own. The first thing I did
was posted flyers in places like the library, health food store, bookstores and anywhere else I could think of that home-schoolers might be. I also posted flyers in some of our local free papers and posted on a few area specific messageboards and email groups that I found.

I didn't want it to be a really structured group. I wanted a casual get-together type of thing. I wanted to do field trips and clubs, but I wanted those to be pulled together by whatever interest the group had as a whole. I also didn't want to be the "boss" of it, I just really didn't have the time. Once people started meeting regularly, and others started coming it worked out really well.

We meet once a week usually at a park, but sometimes depending on weather we have a back up plan.