Homeschooling is a wonderful way to stay connected to your children while helping them become well-rounded adults and our future leaders. It offers you the opportunity to tailor your children’s education to suit your children, your lifestyle, and your beliefs. Being able to train my children to think from a biblical worldview is one of the greatest benefits of homeschooling.
I have listed 10 things that I wished I knew before we started homeschooling 9 years ago. The internet was fairly new and I really did not have any support except for a few local friends. And you know who you are!
The TOP 10 Steps to Homeschooling
- Pray, Pray, and Pray daily
- Create an Education Mission Statement – what are your goals for your homeschool
- Familiarize yourself with your state’s guidelines
- Determine Your Home Education Style – really spend time on researching the different approaches that suit you and your children’s learning style
- Research the different curriculum – look on line, read reviews, and go to homeschool conventions, and used curriculum stores to try to actually get your hands on it. Smell it! And make sure you love it!
- Utilize FREE homeschool resources and buy used if possible
- Start planning your homeschool planning – lots of FREE homeschool planners
- Get involved in a local homeschool group – you need a support group and scheduled field trips to keep your sanity! Trust ME!
- Join several homeschool support groups on-line – take advantage of this! The support on-line is wonderful!
- Get the grade-level thing out of your head – I can’t stress this enough! Don’t try to mimic the public school. Go at your student’s pace or you will drown. Use the recommendations as a guide not a master.
Please feel free to ask me any questions about our homeschool journey. I am not an expert by any means, but might be able to steer you in the right direction. Please join our facebook community where we discuss homeschool and many other topics that inspires the homeschool mom.
Great tips!!
Great tips! Especially 5-7, those are sooo important!
I’ll be using Classical Conversations with my twin Kindergartners this year! Super excited and I agree, pray, pray, pray!
I love teaching Kindergarten! Happy Homeschooling!
I need to focus on #1 and #10 more…..I don’t spend enough time praying over our schooling and I still have trouble “de-schooling” myself. Thanks for a well written post filled with great reminders as a new school year begins!
It took a good 4 years to get the grade level thing out of my head! Have a great year!
Looks like a great list to me! I like to tell the newbies some of the advice I was most thankful to have had; realize that it will take about a year for you to figure out what in the world you are doing, and at least another year to really find your groove and discover what works for your family… and that’s okay! Love it, thanks for sharing!
Those are great tips. I’ve never thought about doing a homeschool education statement. I think we’ll do that this year!
I would love for you to share your statement, Malea!
Thanks for the tips as a new homeschool mom. I’d love to have you link this up to Titus 2 Tuesday on Cornerstone Confessions. I hope to see you there.
Kathy
Hi Kathy,
I would be honored to link this post up! Thanks for the invite.
Great list for homeschooling. Thank you for posting on Saturday Show and Tell. I can’t wait for what you’ll be posting this week, hope to see you back!
-Mackenzie
http://www.cheeriosandlattes.com
Great list. So true. Praying about our homeschool is important. Praying together as a family about our homeschool has helped. I love that grade level doesn’t matter, and I can individualize the curriculum to my children’s personal levels. It is so wonderful that they are not bored or left behind. What a joy!
Great suggestion, Tawnee! Praying together for our homeschool is something our family needs to do more. Thank you for your encouragement.
This list is very good! And yes…prayer so very important! Thank you for sharing it at WJIM this week.
What a great practical list! Thanks for sharing! I’m including this post among the weekly featured. 🙂
Thank you! I am honored (:
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I am new to homeschooling, this is just our second year. We have 4 kids, grades 7th, 5th, 4th and a 9 year old son with special needs that is currently learning at the Kindergarten level. I am struggling to get everything done in a day, especially with our 7th grader. I work on Fridays, so that gives us 4 days for school, plus my youngest has therapy on Tuesdays which takes up a good portion of our day. I just feel like I am missing something and some days I think it would be easier to put them back in school, but I know that is not the path God has for us right now. Any advice would be helpful.
Looking to home school my 8 and 9 year old children. My 8 year old struggles while my 9 year old is advanced. I would love to take it slow with my 2nd grader while my 3rd grader move along more rapidly. My question is, Is it okay for me not to cover the full curriculum, (which ever one I choose) and still have my daughter advance to the next “grade/level”?
Hi April,
I rarely completed the curriculum. School’s only finish 75% of the curriculum. In most curriculums the beginning is review, so it always worked out great for us. HTH!